Askoldov symbolically depicts the Thaw’s search in his heroine’s journey of physical and psychological liberation facilitated by her new, small-family environment. The stages of Klavdia’s emotional and spiritual maturation in the film reverse the symbolic "progress toward consciousness" and the ritual initiation into the "big family" that shaped Stalin-era Civil War discourse, reappearing in the late Thaw quasi-Stalinist narratives. Askoldov’s inverted enactment of a conventional Stalinist rite of passage shows Klavdia undergo its three main phases: separation from previous environment, transition to a new system of values and incorporation into the new community.