The book tells the story of a gang of village kids who sneak around secretly doing good deeds, protecting families whose fathers and husbands are in the Red Army, and doing battle against nasty hooligans.

The story of a boy who organizes his friends into a 'good gang', realizing its sense of adventure into an intricate, intelligent game the purpose of which is to help elders, support minors and fight a group of scoundrels who poison the village life, was evolving through the years, as a result of Gaidar's own social experiments of the kind, according to biographer F.

[2] The semi-autobiographical nature of Timur and His Squad is corroborated by contemporaries, including Konstantin Paustovsky, who, as his son grew seriously ill and was in urgent need of a rare medication, found himself a witness to a quick quasi-military operation in the course of which Gaidar (who was guesting at Paustovsky's house) made a telephone call, summoned the boys who lived in his house and nearby and sent this squad all through the city drugstores to deliver a drug needed in just some forty minutes.

Author Ruvim Frayerman remembered:Once, long before Timur and His Squad had been started Gaidar, said to me: "Why do you think all through the centuries boys were playing outlaws?

Having published by this time two scripts, "Voyennaya Taina" (The War Secret) and "Sudba Barabanshchika" (The Drummer's Fate), he was seeing Timur and His Squad as another scenario.

[2] On September 5, 1940, Pionerskaya Pravda newspaper started publishing 'Timur and His Squad' in serial form and continued to do so up until October the 8th.

[2] Daughters of the Red Army Colonel Alexandrov, Zhenya (13) and Olga (18) come from Moscow to their dacha in a village and find themselves amidst strange night time activities.

She meets Timur, whose Squad, consisting of several dozens of well-organized boys, perform charitable acts in a clandestine fashion.

The Squad helps families of the Army officers and soldiers, supports elders and minors, and fights off some gang hooligans led by a boy named Kvakin.

Zhenya knows otherwise; she develops a strong feeling for Timur, the young leader who is honest, noble, brave and modest to the point of reticence.

Finally, in quite a dramatic fashion he helps Zhenya to meet her father who goes to the war, as does Georgy, now Olga's friend.