Mother

Naïve person that she is, Pelageya (Vera Baranovskaya) cannot understand why her son (Nikolai Batajov) is organizing a workers' strike, while her boorish husband (Aleksandr Chistyakov) is trying to suppress it. When the latter is killed, Pelageya unwittingly gives up her son to the authorities, and is horrified when he is sent to jail. Gradually, as she begins to understand her son's ideological position, she commits herself to the revolutionary cause and fights to free her son.