Tsar Nicholas I is enamoured by Natalia, the wife of Alexander Pushkin. To cover his tracks, the tsar encourages the suit of Georges d'Anthès, a French officer, with the help of Count Alexander von Benckendorff. Pushkin hears rumours of D’Anthès’s love for his wife and challenges him to a duel.

Spirka Spandyr, a petty crook and swindler, escapes from the Soviet Union after serving his sentence and soon becomes the pride of the White émigré community in Amsterdam — Baron Spirka von Spandyr.

A 1935 USA trade-paper reviewer called it... "an impressive and technically outstanding historical drama dealing with czarist terrorism and revolutionary boiling in the days of 1907. Picture is one of the Soviet prize winners and has particular merits in realistic performance, photography and movement, plus some musical touches in way of folk songs." Written by Les Adams

The film shows one of the heroes of the uprising of the Belarusian, Lithuanian and Polish people against forced Russification and the restoration of Poland's independence in 1863.