The film covers the events of 1896-1905 - from the first revolutionary gatherings to the armed Moscow uprising of workers at Krasnaya Presnya, later called Bloody Sunday. St. Petersburg students Alexander Mikhailov and Yevgeny Svetlov and a peasant girl Varvara Postnikova arrive in Moscow and follow the complicated path of underground revolutionaries.

Bezhin Lug (Bezhin Meadow) was to be a Soviet film about a young farm boy whose father attempts to betray the government for political reasons by sabotaging the year's harvest, and the son's efforts to stop his own father to protect the Soviet state, culminating in the boy's murder and a social uprising. Assigned to Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein, the filming followed the same path as with his previous effort, "Que Viva Mexico", into cost overrun and over-shooting of footage. Furthermore, Eisenstein's usage of forbidden experimental film techniques outraged his government superiors, who ordered the film destroyed before it was even completed. All that survives are the first and last frames of each shot, preserved by Sergei Eisenstein’s wife, Pera Atasheva. The 1967 reconstruction, by Naum Kleiman of the Eisenstein Museum and Sergei Yutkevich of Gosfilmofond, places these frames in order, approximating the original film.

The Greek teacher Belikov, who works in a rural gymnasium, loved to keep things in cases, was afraid of everything and lived himself, as if in a case, on the principle: “no matter what happens”. By this principle, he literally "terrorized" the gymnasium and the villagers. Hope appeared when Varenka arrived in the village - “not a girl, but marmalade”, although she was already aged, and “did not mind being married, even if only to a teacher of the Greek language”.

The film is based on real events and reveals the tragic episodes from the life of the Austrian biologist scientist-materialist Paul Kammerer (1880-1926), hunted by regressive scientists and Catholic reactionaries who committed suicide.

Soviet film based on Dostoevsky's autobiographical novel of his prison experiences in Tsarist days.

Shortly before the outbreak of WWI, a peasant from rural Russia arrives in St. Petersburg to find work.