The film is based on the novella The Lost Letter: A Tale Told by the Sexton of the N...Church by Nikolai Gogol from the 1832 cycle Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka.
[1] Cossack Vasyl (Ivan Mykolaichuk) prepares himself for a mounted voyage to Peterburg, the capital of the Russian Empire.
Vasyl carries a hramota (sealed official document) given to him by the hetman through his secretary, Pereverny-Kruchenko, that is rumored to cost ten poods of gold.
When Vasyl and Andriy arrive in St. Petersburg, they hand over the hramota to the baroness von Likhtenberg who passes them to the empress.
[2] Nevertheless, in 1973 the Bureau of Soviet Cinematography Propaganda in Moscow published 50 thousand pamphlets with images of Ivan Mykolaychuk in the role of Cossack Vasyl.