In the first years of NEP, one of the committees Relief for Starving evacuates an orphan girl Mariika from a starving village into a city. Mariika runs away on the way over.

The defeated remnants of vile Ukrainian nationalists, headed by the leader of the Ukrainian liberation movement, Symon Petliura, cannot accept their historical fate and are plotting an insurrection against the Soviet regime in Ukraine. There is nothing Petliura and his cohorts would not do to win back control over Ukraine, including selling it to the highest bidder, in this case, the Polish dictator Jozef Pilsudski. A group of plotters are coordinating an insurrection in Kyiv with an attack from Poland headed by Petliura’s general Yurko Tiutiunnyk. Predictably, the invincible Red Army defeats the nationalist plotters and proves that the Soviet borders are impregnable.

Ostap Mandryka, a serf who has provoked the bar's anger by his behavior, flees from imminent reprisals to Bulgaria, where he is wounded while crossing the border. Together with other fugitives he wanders in foreign lands and finally returns to Russia. The movie has not been preserved.