The Red Army enters the city, while the White Army leaves it. There are only two people in the landlord’s estate, an old doorkeeper and a grammar school student, the landlord’s son. The house is taken by the Red Army detachment, and the doorkeeper’s son Andrii, a Bolshevik, is among them. The old man does not share his beloved son’s views and protects the landlord’s son hiding him in the attic.

The Soviet embassy in England sends two couriers with diplomatic mail to Leningrad. The inspector of security police, White, and a group of policemen attack the Soviet diplomatic couriers at night. The documents get to an English trackman, who gives them to his son, a sailor in Portsmouth.

The momentous film stars Mykola Nademskyi as the grandfather of Tymish, whom he alerts to the secret treasure buried in the mountains of Zvenygora – a treasure that rightfully belongs to his homeland. The film wonderfully blends both lyricism and politics and uses its central construct to build a montage praising Ukrainian industrialization, attacking the bourgeoisie, celebrating the beauty of the Ukrainian steppe and retelling ancient folklore. Sergei Eisenstein said of the film, "As the lights went on, we felt that we had just witnessed a memorable event in the development of the cinema".