The end of spring or the beginning of summer 1930. A citizen enters the office of the Arbat pre-executive committee as a son of Lieutenant Schmidt and, for this reason, needs financial assistance.
This is Ostap Bender, saved by the surgeon from death after Kisa Vorobyaninov, the hero of the novel “Twelve Chairs,” slashed his throat with a razor.
Having received some money and food stamps, Bender sees that another young man is also entering the office, also introducing himself as the son of Lieutenant Schmidt. The delicate situation is resolved by the fact that the "brothers" recognize each other. Going out onto the porch, they see another “son of Lieutenant Schmidt” approaching the building - Panikovsky, a middle-aged citizen with a straw hat, short trousers and a golden tooth in his mouth. Panikovsky in disgrace thrown into the dust. As it turns out, for the case, because even two years before that, all the “sons of Lieutenant Schmidt” divided the whole country into exploitation plots on Sukharevka, and Panikovsky simply invaded someone else’s territory.
Ostap Bender tells his "milk brother" Shura Balaganov about his dream: to take five hundred thousand at once on a silver platter and leave for Rio de Janeiro. "Once some banknotes roam in the country, then there must be people who have a lot of them." Balaganov calls the name of the underground Soviet millionaire living in the city of Chernomorsk - Koreiko. Having met with Adam Kozlevich, the owner of the only Loren-Dietrich automobile in Arbatov, renamed Bender “Antelope Gnu”, young people take him with them and pick up Panikovsky, who stole a goose and flees from his pursuers, along the way.
Travelers get to the rally route, where they are mistaken for participants and solemnly greeted as the head vehicle. In the city of Udoev, which is a thousand kilometers away from Chernomorsk, lunch and a rally await them. From two Americans stuck on a lane, Bender takes two hundred rubles for the recipe for the moonshine they are looking for in the villages. Only in Luchansk the impostors are exposed by the telegram that came there, demanding to detain the crooks. Soon they are overtaken by a convoy of rally participants.
In the nearest town, the green "Antelope-Wildebeest", which is on the wanted list, is repainted in egg-yellow color. In the same place, Ostap Bender promises to heal the monarchist Hvorobiev, suffering from Soviet dreams, saving him, according to Freud, from the original source of the disease - the Soviet government.
The secret millionaire Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko was the most insignificant employee of the financial and accounting department of a certain institution called Hercules. No one suspected that he, who received forty-six rubles a month, had a suitcase with ten million rubles in currency and Soviet banknotes in the locker room at the station.
For some time now, he feels someone's close attention. That beggar with a golden tooth cheekily pursues him, muttering: "Give a million, give a million!" They send insane telegrams, then a book about American millionaires. Having settled down at the old-man Sinitsky’s rebusnik, Koreiko is unrequitedly in love with his granddaughter Zosya. One day, walking with her late in the evening, he is attacked by Panikovsky and Balaganov, kidnapping him from an iron box with ten thousand rubles.
A day later, having put on a police cap with the emblem of the city of Kiev, Bender goes to Koreiko to give him a box of money, but he refuses to accept it, saying that no one robbed him and there was no place to take such money from.
Bender moved by newspaper ad to one of the two rooms of Vasisualiy Lokhankin, from whom Varvara’s wife went to engineer Ptiburdukov. Due to squabbles and scandals of the residents of this communal apartment, her name was “Crow's Crow”. When Ostap Bender first appears in it, the kitchen just flogs Lokhankin with rods for not putting out the light in the restroom.
The great combiner Bender opens ten thousand offices for storing horns and hooves at the stolen from Koreiko. The formal head of the institution is Fuchs, whose job is that under any regime he sits for other people's bankruptcies. Finding out the origin of Koreiko’s wealth, Bender interrogates the accountant Berlaga and other Hercules executives. He travels to the places of activity of Koreiko and, in the end, compiles his detailed biography, which he wants to sell to him for a million.
Not trusting the commander, Panikovsky and Balaganov penetrate Koreiko’s apartment and steal large black weights from him, thinking that they are made of gold. The drivers of Antelope-Wildebeest of Kozlevich are fooled by priests, and Bender’s intervention and disputes with priests are required to return Kozlevich with the machine to Horns and Hooves.
Bender ends the indictment in the Koreiko case. He also revealed the abduction of a train with food, the creation of linden artels, and the ruined power station, and speculation in currency and furs, and the establishment of bloated joint-stock companies. The inconspicuous clerk Koreiko was also the actual head of Hercules, through whom he pumped huge amounts.
Ostap Bender blames Koreiko all night. The morning comes, and they set off together to the station, where there is a suitcase with millions to give Bender one of them. At this time in the city begins training anti-chemical anxiety. Koreiko, suddenly wearing a gas mask, becomes indistinguishable in a crowd of people like him. Despite resistance, Bender is carried on a stretcher to a gas shelter, where, by the way, he meets Zosia Sinitskaya, the beloved girl of an underground millionaire.
So, Koreiko disappeared in an unknown direction. A revision arrives at Horns and Hooves and takes Fuchs to prison. At night, Raven's Settlement burns down, where companions live: residents, except Lokhankin and the old woman, who do not believe in electricity or insurance, insured their property and set fire to their own homes. From ten thousand stolen from Koreiko, almost nothing remains. For the last money, Bender buys a large bouquet of roses and sends it to Zosa. Having received three hundred rubles for the script “Neck” just written and already lost at the film factory, Bender buys gifts for his comrades and looks after Zosya with chic. Suddenly, she tells Ostap that she received a letter from Koreiko from the construction of the Eastern Highway, where he works in the Northern laying town.
Accomplices urgently go to the new address of Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko on their Antelope-Gnu. On a country road, the car is falling apart. They are walking. In the nearest village, Bender takes fifteen rubles for an evening performance, which they will give on their own, but Panikovsky abducts a goose here, and everyone has to flee. Panikovsky does not withstand the hardships of the path and dies. At the small railway station, Balaganov and Kozlevich refuse to follow their commander.
A special letter train for government members, drummers, Soviet and foreign journalists goes to the Eastern Highway to the junction of the two rail tracks. It also includes Ostap Bender. Satellites take him for a provincial correspondent who caught up with a train on an airplane, and feed him with home provisions. Bender recounts the parable of the Eternal Jew, walking around Rio de Janeiro in white pants, and after crossing the Romanian border smashed by Petliurists. In the absence of money, he also sells one of the journalists a manual for writing articles, feuilletons and poems for significant occasions.
Finally, at the celebration of the bow of the railway in Rattling Key, Bender finds an underground millionaire. Koreiko is forced to give him a million and in exchange burns a dossier for himself in the stove. The return to Moscow is hampered by the lack of a ticket for a letter train and a special flight for the aircraft. It is necessary, having bought camels, to get to them through the desert. The closest Central Asian city in the oasis, where Bender and Koreiko fall, has already been rebuilt on a socialist basis.
During the month of the road, Bender was unable to get to any hotel, neither to the theater, nor to buy clothes, except in a thrift store. In a Soviet country, everything is decided not by money, but by armor and distribution. Having a million, Bender has to pass himself off as an engineer, conductor and even again as the son of Lieutenant Schmidt. In Moscow, at the Ryazan station, he meets Balaganov and gives him “for complete happiness” fifty thousand. But in a crowded tram on Kalachevka, Balaganov automatically steals a penny’s handbag, and in front of Bender’s eyes he is dragged to the police.
Neither a house to buy, nor even to talk with an Indian philosopher about the meaning of life, an individual individual outside the Soviet collective has no opportunity. Remembering Zos, Bender takes the train to Chernomorsk. In the evening, his companions in the compartment talk about getting millions of inheritances, in the morning - about millions of tons of cast iron. Bender shows the students he makes friends with his million, after which the friendship ends and the students scatter. Ostap Bender cannot even buy a new car to Kozlevich. He does not know what to do with money - to lose? send to the drug addict finance? Zosia married a young man named Themidy. "Horns and hooves", invented by Bender, turned around in a large state-owned enterprise. The 33-year-old, at the age of Christ, Bender has no place on Soviet soil.
On a March 1931 night, he crosses the Romanian border. He has a double coat, a lot of currency and jewelry, including a rare order of the Golden Fleece, which he calls the Golden Calf. But the Romanian border guards rob Bender to the skin. By chance he only has the order. We have to return to the Soviet coast. Monte Cristo from Ostap did not work. It remains to be retrained in management houses.
