Act I The play is framed by an address being given by Anatoly Lunacharsky to a group of Young Communists at an unspecified date in the future, on the anniversary of Lenin's death.

Lunacharsky gives a speech which solidly toes the Communist Party line about the Revolution and its leaders, Joseph Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky.

The narrative begins in Capri in 1910 at a meeting of several exiled Communist leaders – including Lenin, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Alexey Gorky, and Alexandra Kollontai.

When Lenin arrives in Finland Station, he is initially greeted warmly – until he calls for the establishment of a socialist regime and an end to the war – even if it means a German victory.

Later on, the situation comes to a head as the Russian army finally collapses, and Lenin recruits Zhelnik – commander of the Kronstadt Sailors' Soviet – in his plan to capture Petrograd for the Bolsheviks.

The assassination coincides with the outbreak of full-scale Civil War and intervention of foreign powers, leading Dzerzhinsky to institute the Red Terror against all Russians suspected of being counter-revolutionary.

Stalin and Dzerzhinsky meet with Victor Mdvani, leader of the Georgian Communist Party, and interrogate him over disloyal statements made in a private letter and his alleged refusal to support Lenin's policies of collectivisation and unification in his republic.

At the end of this meeting, a Cheka officer – Pratkov – is identified as Captain Draganov, a high-ranking member of the Czar's secret police, and Stalin orders him executed.

The play ends with Lunacharsky's speech – discussing Trotsky's fall from grace and saying that the Revolution should not be remembered as a "pageant of Great Men", but rather as an inevitable event which was served by Lenin, Stalin, and others.