A convoy of trucks and freight trains moves through mist toward a German concentration camp with grid roads, wire fences, and uniform barracks. The engine driver complains that disinfecting wagons will delay his return.

Old Bolshevik Mikhail Sidorovich Mostovskoy has observed 56 nationalities imprisoned alongside him. The prisoners are designated with colored stripes on their uniforms: red politicals, black saboteurs, and green criminals. All experience starvation and forced labor. Mostovskoy reflects that National Socialism created new categories including POWs and preventive-detainees. Camps are self-policed by prisoner kapos. He finds it sinister that the system knows the souls it destroys.

Mostovskoy recalls his August capture near Stalingrad with Agrippina Petrovna (released), driver Semyonov (sent to prisoner column), and army doctor Sofya Levinton (taken with him). Transported through Poland—where a Polish bishop briefly shared his compartment—to the camp, he now lives in a special Gestapo-interest block, where prisoners are better fed but in a constant state of uncertainty as men are called to their deaths.

After the first snowfall, a Spanish orderly informs Mostovskoy that his name appeared on an official document. Italian priest Gardi fixates on food by day but prays fervently by night. Mostovskoy is approached by Ikonnikov-Morzh, a seemingly ageless former Tolstoy devotee whom the other prisoners consider a spiritual lunatic. Ikonnikov tells Mostovskoy that, after witnessing the massacre of 20,000 Jews, he concluded God does not exist. Mostovskoy avoids Chernetsov, a former Menshevik, and finds himself respected among Soviet officers including Osipov, General Gudz, and Major Yershov. Imprisonment has restored Mostovskoy’s self-confidence, though he is troubled that he finds something alien in his friends’ thoughts and something familiar in his enemies’ ideas.

Prisoners communicate in a hybrid language infused with camp slang. An American colonel tries to speak with the Russians, especially Yershov, through gestures. Among the Soviets, a bitter divide exists between patriots and those considering joining Vlasov’s collaborationist army.

Mostovskoy attempts to raise the Russians’ spirits, arguing Fascism’s hatred of the Soviet state proves Lenin’s cause to be just and that pre-war Soviet brutality was necessary. Yershov agrees, believing that a German camp is better than a Russian one.

In a Volga bunker, General Chuykov, commander of the 62nd Army, and chief of staff Krylov are cut off by artillery. When the raids stop at dusk, the command post stirs to life. Commanders like Batyuk report. The dead are buried nearby.

Defenders face their hardest test. Germans push toward the Volga in brutal fashion. Blue markers advance daily across the map as the red Soviet line shrinks. Soldiers fear the line will break.

A German attack ruptures oil tanks, sending flaming oil into a ravine. Krylov, Chuykov, and staff find safety on a promontory surrounded by fire. On the left bank, commander Yeremenko loses contact and fears the worst. Chief of staff Zakharov learns survivors are visible but unreachable. He weeps. Forty officers burn to death that night.

Commissar (a Party official embedded in military units) Nikolay Grigorevich Krymov arrives to resolve a quarrel between a regimental commander and a commissar in Rodimtsev’s division. At Rodimtsev’s headquarters, divisional commissar Vavilov reports both men have already been killed by a bomb. As Krymov begins a lecture, a German attack breaks through. Rodimtsev leads a counter-attack; Krymov joins in.

The narrative reflects on combat psychology, where “We” replaces “I” and time distorts. Krymov feels swept up, replaced by primal solidarity. He intuits the German assault is defeated.

Next morning, an exhausted Krymov dozes at Rodimtsev’s post. He is woken by a fiddle played by a barber named Rubinchik. The melody prompts him to reflect on his wife Zhenya, who left him, and how he feels like a “stepson of the time” (51)—an old revolutionary whose era has passed. Rubinchik shaves him.

Yeremenko visits Chuykov’s headquarters on the right bank. After a three-day wait, he crosses. The meeting is tense; the important conversation about a counter-offensive never happens. Yeremenko departs, keeping secret his Stavka orders to prepare a counter-offensive.

Regimental commander Major Byerozkin inspects battalions with orderly Glushkov. He narrowly avoids a sniper’s bullet; a live grenade lands between his feet but fails to explode. He worries about his evacuated wife and daughter. Before leaving Podchufarov’s command post, Byerozkin delivers sharp criticisms about discipline.

In Kazan, physicist Viktor Pavlovich Shtrum’s family has been evacuated. His wife, Lyudmila Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova, awaits a letter from her son Tolya, an artillery officer. The household includes teenage Nadya and Lyudmila’s mother, Aleksandra Vladimirovna. Lyudmila feels alienated from Viktor, who blames her poor relationship with his mother Anna Semyonovna for their failure to evacuate Anna from Berdichev. He is indifferent to Tolya (Lyudmila’s son from a previous marriage). Viktor no longer confides in his wife about his scientific work.

In the kitchen, Alexandra Vladimirovna criticizes Lyudmila’s elitism, sides with Viktor, and announces that she will not move back to Moscow. Viktor excitedly brings up a physics concept at supper; Lyudmila senses he is near a breakthrough. That night, however, he remains silent.

Viktor contemplates the shift in physics from 19th-century mechanics to quantum theory and relativity. He is awed by Einstein’s work. He feels ecstatic parallels between the respective historical significance of physics and Stalingrad, followed by despair at the state of the world.

Anna Semyonovna writes a final letter from the Berdichev Jewish ghetto. She recounts the German invasion, neighbors’ hostility, and her forced relocation to the ghetto, where she finds strange relief among Jews who share the same fate and maternal love for her people. She learns young Jewish men are digging mass graves. Aware of her impending death, she fills the letter with memories, ending by imploring her son to “live, live, live for ever” (93).

Viktor confronts his Jewish identity, struck by horrifying parallels between modern physics’ statistical probabilities and Fascism’s “quantum politics” of liquidating races. He rejects the parallel, asserting humanity’s kindness will triumph. His mother’s last words haunt him.

Lyudmila receives an official communication: Tolya is alive but gravely wounded in a Saratov hospital. She rushes to Viktor at the institute, where he is discussing re-evacuation to Moscow. That night, without ticket or luggage, she boards a steamer for Saratov to visit her wounded son.