In 1885 a foreign entrepreneur ventures to Russia with dreams of selling a new, experimental steam-driven timber-harvester, named 'The Barber', in the wilds of Siberia. An American falls in love a young Russian officer she has met in Moscow, and spends the next 10 years pursuing her love, who has been exiled there. Lots of drunken Generals, dancing bears, cadets fighting Pushkin-like duels, postcard imagery of the grandest Moscow buildings, and shots of the untamed Siberian landscape - this is Mother Russia!