Yunker Olenin, a representative of St. Petersburg's "golden youth," travels to the Caucasus in search of romance. His regiment is stationed in a Cossack village. There he falls in love with the beautiful Marina and even decides to marry her, not yet knowing that she loves the Cossack Lukashka and would never trade him for a lord.

Princess Shirvanskaya is from Baku. She lives in Paris and wants to get back her father’s property who before the revolution owned big oil fields.

Engineer McLean, the prince's wife Shirvanskaya and his lover Rumanescu, who came to the Soviet Union, pretend to be circus actors and act to the detriment of the country. Arranged as a worker in the oil industry, Rumanescu steals blueprints of a military invention from the chemist Petrov. Tom Jackson discovers that the circus performer and the saboteur John are one and the same person. Saboteurs, who will be chased by "red devils" and militia workers. They will try to escape abroad, but they will die in an avalanche near the Turkish border.

An aging drilling foreman recounts the brutal suppression of an oil workers’ strike in pre-revolutionary Baku.

In a capitalist country, "Jacob's Trading House" makes money by smuggling cocaine. To hide its shady business, the firm buys up land at cheap prices and leases it to the city's unemployed. But even here, the businessmen create a situation of slavery for the settlers. The manager of the firm marries the girl he seduced to one of the colonists, a former vagrant. The girl suffers greatly from this farce and tries to return home. Her old father fights Jacob. Jacob knocks the old man down. The colonists' patience runs out and they march against the businessmen.