The film begins as a beautiful woman at the turn of the century in Russia walks into to the czars palace and asks for a meeting to ask permission to visit her brother in prison. When she is led to the meeting she pulls out a gun and shoots the leader dead as a mans voice begins the history of revolution in Russia and the consequences. The leaders of a small group of Russian socialists lead by George (Andrei Panin) band together to bring down the current government monarchy. The government lead by The Grand Prince Sergei Aleksandrovich (Vasiliy Zotov) has a history of suffering attacks from dissident socialists, and as George ruminates on past efforts at assassination and the consequences. The bomb maker for the group Erna (Kseniya Rapport) fuels her drive with a cocaine habit and has fallen in love with George after the two has become intimate during their association as assassins. George discusses the motives and basic philosophies of the group with Fydor (Rostislav Bershauer) a man who hates that revolution has created a large imbalance in the social and economic values in the country. There is also Vanya (Artem Semakin) who believes that the terror that terrorists ply is the basic goal of revolution, and there is also the non-nonsense Heinrich (Aleksey Kazakov) who has an education and thinks about the efforts of the group and their meaning on a deeper level than the rest of the group. During the groups efforts to bomb the government eventually their schemes fail or cause members to fall as George galvanizes his own individual efforts to take action to bring down the Grand Prince.
In pre-Soviet Russia, Boris Savinkov leads a terrorist faction of Socialist-Revolutionary Party members responsible for the deaths of governors and ministers.