They Fought for Their Country (Russian: Они сражались за Родину, romanized: Oni srazhalis' za Rodinu) is a 1975 Soviet war film in two parts, based on the eponymous novel written by Mikhail Sholokhov and directed by Sergei Bondarchuk.

One of the soldiers of the regiment, Pyotr Lopakhin (Vasily Shukshin), who gives the impression of a merry fellow and a joker, goes to a nearby village for salt and a bucket to cook freshly caught crayfish in.

Relying on his talkative charm, Lopakhin makes a request to an old Cossack woman (Angelina Stepanova) but is met with contempt as the soldiers retreat leaving the locals to fend for themselves.

After a difficult conversation, it turns out that behind the mask of a merry fellow Lopakhin, there emerges a serious person who is deeply worried about the fate of his country, and the old woman fulfills his request.

Before the second wave, German aircraft bomb the positions of the regiment resulting in many casualties and Private Nikolai Streltsov (Vyacheslav Tikhonov), Lopakhin's friend, suffers heavy shell shock.

During their break, Private Nekrasov (Yuri Nikulin), the father of four children, amuses the soldiers with a funny story about how he accidentally scared a decrepit old woman who thought that he was trying to pester her at night.

Natalya bitterly answers him that she has a husband who is now in the hospital and that she only prepared the food for them because the foreman of the regiment had told the local chairman that they had recently prevailed in a very difficult battle against the enemy.