648. Ukraine under the oppression of Poland. Polish nobility committing outrage, burning villages one after another. Hetman of Zaporozhian Cossacks Bohdan Khmelnytskyi gathers the army of defenders of the motherland.

Taken from a Lermontov play, the story begins when beautiful Nina loses a bracelet during a masked ball. Another woman finds it and without revealing whose bracelet it belongs to, she gives it to an ardent Calvary officer admirer at the ball. This leads to deeper and deeper incisions upon the urbane social body of Tsarist Russia. A drama of pride, marital distrust, gambling, infidelity and humiliation twirls around the decaying corpse of a perverted social class.