On Good Friday April 15, 1927, mother-in-law Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov, a former leader of the nobility, dies in the city of N. Before her death, she informs him that in one of the chairs of the living room, which remained in Stargorod, from where they fled after the revolution, she sewed all the family jewels. Vorobyaninov urgently leaves for his hometown. The priest Fyodor Vostrikov, who confessed the old woman and learned about jewelry, goes there.

Around the same time, a young man of about twenty-eight in a green suit with a scarf and an astrolabe in his hands came into Stargorod, the son of a Turkish citizen, Ostap Bender. By chance, he stops to spend the night in the janitorial house of Vorobyaninov, where he meets with his former owner. The latter decides to take Bender as his assistants, and between them is something like a concession.

The hunt for chairs begins. The first is stored here, in the mansion, which is now the "2nd house of social security." The head of the house, Alexander Yakovlevich (Alkhen), a shy thief, arranged a bunch of his relatives in the house, one of whom sold this chair for three rubles to an unknown person. It turns out to be just Father Fyodor, with whom Vorobyaninov enters the fray for a chair on the street. The chair breaks. There are no jewelry in it, but it becomes clear that Vorobyaninov and Ostap have a competitor.

Companions move to the Sorbonne Hotel. Bender is looking for an archivist Korobeinikov on the outskirts of the city, storing at his home all warrants for furniture nationalized by the new government, including the former Vorobyaninov walnut suite by Master Gams. It turned out that one chair was given to the war invalid Gritsatsuev, and ten were transferred to the Moscow Museum of Furniture Art. Fyodor's father, who came after Bender, is being deceived by the archivist, selling him warrants for the headset of Generals Popova, which was once handed over to engineer Bruns.

The first tram line is launched on May Day in Stargorod. The accidentally recognized Vorobyaninov is invited to dinner with his long-time mistress Elena Stanislavovna Bour, who currently works as fortune-telling. Bender gives the assembled for dinner "former" of his partner for "the giant of thought, the father of Russian democracy and a person close to the emperor" and calls for the creation of an underground "Union of the sword and screaming." Five hundred rubles are going to the future needs of a secret society.

The next day, Bender marries the widow of Gritsatsueva, “a sultry woman and the poet’s dream,” and on her wedding night she leaves her, taking other things in addition to her chair. The chair is empty, and he and Vorobyaninov are leaving in search of Moscow.

Concessionaires stay in a student dorm with Bender's acquaintances. There Vorobyaninov falls in love with Kolya’s young draftsman’s wife - Lisa, quarreling with her husband about forced, due to lack of funds, vegetarianism. Accidentally finding himself in a museum of furniture craftsmanship, Lisa meets our heroes there, looking for their chairs. It turns out that the required set, which had been in the warehouse for seven years, will be auctioned off tomorrow at the Petrovsky Passage building. Vorobyaninov appoints Lisa a date. Half the amount received from the Stargorod conspirators, he takes the girl in a cab to the Ars cinema, and then to Prague, now the “exemplary canteen of the MSPO”, where he shamefully gets drunk and, having lost his lady, is in the morning at the police station with twelve rubles in the pocket. At the auction, Bender wins the bidding at two hundred. He has so much money, but he still has to pay thirty rubles of the commission fee. It turns out that Vorobyaninov has no money. A couple are taken out of the hall, the chairs are put up for sale by retail.Bender hires the surrounding street children for a ruble to trace the fate of the chairs. Four chairs get into the Columbus Theater, two were taken away by a chic chmara cab, one chair is bought before their eyes by a shining and wagging citizen living on Sadovo-Spasskaya, the eighth is in the editorial office of the Stank newspaper, the ninth in the apartment near Chistye Prudy, and the tenth disappears in the goods yard of the Oktyabrsky station. A new round of searches begins.

"Chic Chmara" turns out to be a "cannibal" Ellochka, the wife of engineer Schukin. Ellochka dispensed with thirty words and dreamed of plugging in her belt the daughter of billionaire Vanderbildsha. Bender easily exchanges one of her chairs for Madame Gritsatsueva’s stolen strainer, but the bad luck is that engineer Schukin, unable to bear his wife’s spending, moved out of the apartment the day before, taking a second chair. The engineer living with a friend takes a shower, imprudently leaves, soaped, on the landing, the door slams, and when Bender appears here, water is already pouring down the stairs. The chair, which opened the door to the great combinator, was given almost with tears of gratitude.

Vorobyaninov’s attempt to take over the chair of the “bleating citizen,” who turned out to be a professional humorist Absalom Iznurenkov, ends in failure. Then Bender, posing as a bailiff, takes the chair himself.

In the endless corridors of the House of Nations, in which the editorial office of the newspaper "Stank" is located, Bender runs into Madame Gritsatsueva, who arrived in Moscow to look for her husband, whom she learned from a random note. In pursuit of Bender, she gets entangled in numerous corridors and leaves for Stargorod with nothing. In the meantime, all the members of the “Union of the Sword and Shouting” were arrested, distributing places among themselves in the future government, and then reporting to each other in fear.

Having opened a chair in the office of the editor of "Stank", Ostap Bender gets to a chair in the apartment of the poet Nichifor Lyapis-Trubetskoy. There remains a chair that disappeared in the goods yard of the Oktyabrsky Station, and four chairs of the Columbus Theater, which is going on tour around the country. Having visited on the eve of the premiere of Gogol's “Marriage”, set in the spirit of constructivism, accomplices are convinced of the presence of chairs and set off after the theater. First, they pretend to be artists and get on a ship that sets off with the actors to agitate the population to buy bonds of a winning loan. In one chair stolen from the director’s cabin, concessionaires find a box, but it contains only the name plate of Master Gams. In Vasyuki they are driven off the ship for a badly made banner. There, posing as a grandmaster, Bender gives a lecture on the topic “fruitful opening idea” and a session of simultaneous chess. Before the shocked Vasyukins, he develops a plan for transforming the city into a world center of chess thought, in New Moscow - the capital of the country, the world, and then, when the method of interplanetary communication and the universe are invented. Playing chess for the second time in his life, Bender loses all games and escapes from the city in a boat prepared by Vorobyaninov in advance, turning over the barque with his pursuers.

Catching up with the theater, accomplices get to Stalingrad in early July, from there to Mineralnye Vody and, finally, to Pyatigorsk, where fitter Mechnikov agrees to steal the twenty necessary: ​​"in the morning - money, in the evening - chairs or in the evening - money, in the morning - chairs." To raise money, Kisa Vorobyaninov asks for alms as a former member of the State Duma from the Cadets, and Ostap collects money from tourists for entering the Failure - Pyatigorsk attraction. At the same time, the former owners of chairs gather in Pyatigorsk: comedian Iznurenkov, cannibal Ellochka with her husband, thief Alchen with his wife Sashkhen from the social security institution. The fitter brings the promised chairs, but only two out of three, which are opened (to no avail!) On the top of Mount Mashuk.

Meanwhile, wheeled around the country in search of chairs engineer Bruns and deceived father Fedor.First to Kharkov, from there to Rostov, then to Baku, and finally to the cottage near Batum, where on his knees he asks Bruns to sell him chairs. His wife sells everything that is possible and sends money to Father Fedor. Having bought chairs and chopped them up on the nearest beach, Father Fyodor, to his horror, discovers nothing.

The Columbus Theater takes the last chair to Tiflis. Bender and Vorobyaninov go to Vladikavkaz, and from there go on foot to Tiflis along the Georgian Military Road, where they meet the unfortunate father Fedor. Fleeing from the pursuit of competitors, he climbs onto a rock that he cannot get off, goes crazy there, and ten days later Vladikavkaz firemen remove him from there to take him to a psychiatric hospital.

The concessionaires finally get to Tiflis, where they find one of the members of the “Union of the Sword and Shouting” Kislyarsky, from whom they “borrow” five hundred rubles to save the life of the “father of Russian democracy”. Kislyarsky flees to the Crimea, but friends, having drunk a week, go there after the theater.

September. Having made their way to the theater in Yalta, accomplices are ready to open the last of the theater chairs, when he suddenly “jumps” to the side: the famous Crimean earthquake of 1927 begins. Nevertheless, when they open the chair, Bender and Vorobyaninov find nothing in it. There remains the last chair, sunk in the goods yard of the October Station in Moscow.

At the end of October, Bender finds him in a new club of railway workers. After a comic bargaining with Vorobyaninov for interest on future capital, Ostap falls asleep, and Ippolit Matveyevich, who was somewhat damaged in his mind for six months of searching, cuts his throat with a razor. Then he sneaks into the club and opens the last chair there. There are no diamonds in it either. The watchman says that in the spring he accidentally found treasures hidden in the chair by the bourgeoisie. It turns out that with the money the new clubhouse was built, to everyone’s happiness.