Ostap Bender is an unemployed con artist living by his wits in post-revolutionary Soviet Russia. He joins forces with Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, a former nobleman who has returned to his hometown to find a cache of missing jewels hidden in some chairs appropriated by the Soviet authorities.

The search for the bejeweled chairs takes these unlikely heroes from the provinces to Moscow and into the wilds of Soviet Georgia and the Trans-Caucasus mountains. On their quest, they encounter a wide variety of characters: from opportunistic Soviet bureaucrats to aging survivors of the pre-revolutionary propertied classes, each one more selfish, venal, and ineffective than the one before.