Nikolai Volshaninov

This colourful, music-filled and sensual melodrama based on early stories by Maxim Gorky tells the fatal love story between the beautiful and rebellious girl Rada and the handsome horse thief Zobar. The story is set in early 20th century Bessarabia, now part of Moldova, then belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Based on the events that took place in Odessa in 1910, when, on the instructions of the Foreign Bureau of the RSDLP, a prominent Bolshevik underground worker arrived in the city under the guise of a French timber merchant, who was to organize the delivery of illegal literature to Russia through the Odessa port. The task can be completed. In Odessa, a variety show theater was created, which, having gained fame, toured Russia and received "theater props" from France...