Little dog Kashtanka is stolen, sold, tossed out into the street and saved by a clown. Young Fedyushka gets lost looking for the dog and ends up a prisoner of the sinister Mazamet who compels him to rove from house to house to make money, while Fedyushka’s father wanders through the streets in search of his lost child.

A machinist on a Navy ship has two sons, both bolcheviks. When the revolution comes the Tsarist police captures the machinist to put pressure on his sons.