History of the twentieth century. View from the village. The path of the Russian peasantry in time and space from pre-revolutionary Cossack villages and rich Siberian villages to the taiga Ural villages, to the peasant Gulag, with children and the elderly, to certain death. The authors of the documentary trace this tragic Odyssey from the manifesto of 1861 to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. They offer society a different view of both the pre-revolutionary Russian village and the civil war, which, in their opinion, was not a war of some reds with some whites, but a war of the state against the peasantry, with its people, because the peasants at that moment made up 80 percent of the population. What was behind this unprecedented attempt in history to destroy 10 million of the best, most talented people of the village?