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How I Ended This Summer (Kak ya provyol etim letom)
Meteorology student Pavel "Pasha" Danilov is spending the summer as an intern at an isolated, Soviet-era weather station on a remote Arctic island with only the older, experienced geophysicist Sergei Gulybin for company. Their sole job is to collect weather and tide statistics every four hours and transmit them by radio to the meteorology center.
Sergei takes the boat on an unauthorized fishing trip for a few days. When the radio operator urgently asks to speak with Sergei, Pasha makes up excuses. Eventually Pasha is told that Sergei's wife and young son have been "gravely injured" in an accident, although it is apparent they have been killed. He is told that a ship, Academic Obruchev, is coming to get them. The news keeps Pasha awake, but when he does sleep he oversleeps; the data goes unrecorded. He hastily enters fake numbers in the logbook. Sergei comes ashore with trout and tells Pasha about his wife craving salted trout during her pregnancy. Pasha starts to say something, but Sergei interrupts and teaches him how to fillet a fish.
Sergei quickly figures out that Pasha made up the numbers and explodes in anger. He tells him that the station has been continuously occupied since 1935, and that no one had faked the numbers out of sheer laziness, and that now all their work is worthless. He accuses Pasha of being a "tourist" in the Arctic in order to write a pointless essay, "How I Ended This Summer" (a play on the clichéd "How I Spent My Summer Vacation.") Sergei tells him an intimidating story about the time one geophysicist apparently killed the other due to their strained relationship.
Frightened, Pasha does not tell Sergei about his family. When Sergei leaves to get more trout, Pasha is told that the ship is stuck in ice, but that a helicopter will come before the weather worsens. Pasha, carrying a rifle, heads to the lagoon to meet the helicopter. Pasha lights a flare, but the pilot cannot see it due to heavy fog and flies away. Pasha then notices bear pawprints. He sees the distinct white shape of a polar bear. The bear chases him. He begins to descend a steep embankment and trips.
Pasha wakes up in Sergei's boat. As they disembark, Pasha tries to say that he needs to tell Sergei something, then finally blurts out that Sergei's family is dead. Sergei comes toward him, and Pasha, with an injured leg, falls to the ground. Thinking Sergei is going to attack him, Pasha fires at him but misses. He then runs away while Sergei picks up his gun and fires at him, and then keeps shooting into the air.
Pasha takes up residence in an old abandoned cabin. He wakes up to hear Sergei outside and hides, still afraid. Sergei says he wants to talk to him. Sergei, who is carrying his rifle, hears Pasha step on something that makes a large cracking sound. Thinking Pasha fired at him, he fires his own rifle. Pasha runs away.
Pasha huddles by an old radioisotope thermoelectric generator to keep warm before realizing he is exposing himself to radiation. He sneaks into the cabin when Sergei is away and tries to contact the main station for help but cannot reach anyone. Starving, he steals Sergei's fish. He screams and curses Sergei. He hangs fish up on the isotope beacon; he later sneaks back into the cabin and replaces Sergei's stash of fish with contaminated fish.
One night Sergei sees the disheveled Pasha looking in the cabin window. He signals to Pasha to come inside and have some fish. He says the Academic Obruchev made it through the ice and will come in three days. Pasha confesses that the fish has been contaminated. Sergei goes to vomit up the fish he has just eaten. Sergei returns and says only that they do not have to tell anyone what has happened. Three days later, the Academic arrives.
Sergei tells Pasha he plans to stay on the island. Pasha threatens to tell what has happened to force Sergei to get medical help. Sergei grabs Pasha, and hugs him, telling him that he needs to stay on the island alone.