When the Soviet troops freed Ivan from the Nazi prison, he was charged with high treason and was facing long years in Siberian camps. Ivan did not want to die behind barbed wire or wait for an amnesty. Once he got an opportunity, he escaped from his camp. He was hunted high and low like the most wanted criminal and there was no place for him in the USSR. Based on the historical realities of those times, the film unfolds before the viewer a credible sequence of events that turned the Hero of the Soviet Union into a GULAG prisoner and then an Indian Chief. That is why the name Ivan Datsenko had to be changed for another - Firecrosser.