A small provincial Russian town is suddenly aroused from its lethargy by the imminent arrival of the first railroad. Gorky is less concerned here with the Industrial Revolution than with the damaging personal effect of people who represent progress; in this case two engineers who come to prepare for the railroad and who sweep into the lives of all and sundry with the force of a gale upsetting stalemated romances stale marriages and the equilibrium of the petty bureaucracy.