Three recruits struggle to survive the last hundred days of training before becoming real soldiers. Using the real Red Army during the decline of the Soviet Union, the vignettes of the film gradually merge to form a story of frustration and despair, mirroring the plight of the entire Soviet Block at the time. The young soldiers endure their daily routines of washing one another, eating, training and sleeping together with no will of their own. Subdued, they wander without purpose through their alarmingly compelling, insular and overtly homoerotic world.