MUR investigator Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Khlystov (prototype - Eduard Khlystalov) receives by post a posthumous photograph of Sergei Yesenin.

Khlystov finds materials related to Yesenin's life, and also searches for direct witnesses who personally knew the poet.

Khlystov even wants to insist on exhumation, but it turns out that this is impossible: the foundation was concreted in order to affix the monument to Yesenin on his grave.

The film shows the main events of the poet's life, including his military service, coming to Petrograd, becoming a poet, communicating with Russia's most important figures, traveling around the country and the world, life with Isadora Duncan and his final years.

The fate of the people with whom Sergei Alexandrovich was directly connected is told in the scene depicting the poet's funeral.