A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.
Unfolding over two days in 1924, the film depicts the dying Lenin, world revolutionary and father of the USSR, now powerless and isolated at his Gorki estate. Cared for by his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaia, sister Maniasha, his German doctor and several attendants, Lenin raves about his diminishing faculties, discusses the deaths of great figures (including Marx), rides a car to a picnic in a meadow and ponders his historic legacy.
Vászka, the town robber, is off his form. He has no money and Luvnya, his sweetheart, constantly clamors for a trip to Moscow. His problems are solved when he meets Ványka, the village robber. The two robbers enter into an alliance and start working together.
