According to Orlova, the name of the film is taken from a popular Russian folk song, Stenka Razin, that Aleksandrov sang while rowing with Charlie Chaplin in San Francisco Bay.

[2] Nikita Khrushchev in his memoirs says that in the pre-World War II period Stalin laughed at him since he resembled a character from the film.

Before Volga-Volga, Grigory Aleksandrov wrote a script about a female taper (a ballroom cinema pianist), Katya Muratova, who could not find a better job after finishing her conservatory studies.

[3] In the provincial city of Melkovodsk along the banks of the Volga river, the musically inclined letter carrier Dunya Petrova, aka "Arrow" travels on a barge to carry an important message to Ivan Byvalov.

Byvalov is an ambitious, pompous and rather boorish apparatchik who is hoping for promotion that will take him to a job in Moscow, and is most interested in her message.

Arrow then leads what appears to be the entire population of the city in a series of songs and dances intended to prove the people do have musical talents.

Arrow and her group finally board the modern ship Iosif Stalin, where she finishes off The Song of the Volga that Trubyshkin disparaged.

Reflecting his general ignorance, Byvalov names various long dead classical composers as the author before he is forced to admit that Arrow wrote The Song of the Volga.