The action begins in 1912. The heroes of the painting - neighbors, villagers, Cossacks from the Tatarsky farm of the village of Vyoshenskaya - have lived on this land for centuries, they are connected by kinship, friendship, love, common labor and military service. But this durable and self-sufficient world with its unique way of life, habits and a special system of views and values is collapsing under the onslaught of bloody turmoil and revolution. Don is divided by hatred. The seemingly immutable age-old foundations of Don life - land, farm, family, military duty - are dissolving in the crucible of fratricidal war. The Melekhov, Korshunov, and Astakhov families are involved in the cycle of military and political events.