Four years later, during the fifth famine, he drove people to cities or forests - there was a crop failure. Zakhar Pavlovich remained alone in the village. Over the long life of his hands not a single product was passed, from a frying pan to an alarm clock, but Zakhar Pavlovich himself had nothing: no family, no home. One night, when Zakhar Pavlovich listened to the noise of the long-awaited rain, he distinguished the distant whistle of a steam locomotive. In the morning he gathered and left for the city. Work in the engine depot opened for him a new skillful world - so beloved for a long time, as if he had always been familiar, and he decided to stay in it forever.

The Dvanovs were born sixteen children, seven survived. The eighth was adopted by Sasha, the son of a fisherman. His father drowned out of interest: he wanted to know what happens after death. Sasha is the same age as one of the children of the Dvanovs, Proshka. When twins were born in the hunger year, Prokhor Abramovich Dvanov sewed a bag for alms to Sasha and led him outside the outskirts. "We are all boors and villains!" - Prokhor Abramovich defined himself correctly, returning to his wife and his own children. Sasha went to the cemetery to say goodbye to his father. He decided, as soon as he collected a full bag of bread, to dig a dugout next to his father’s grave and live there, since he didn’t have a house.

Zakhar Pavlovich asks Proshka Dvanov to find Sasha for the ruble and takes him to his sons. Zakhar Pavlovich loves Sasha with all his devotion to old age, with all his sense of unaccountable, obscure hopes. Sasha works as an apprentice in the depot to learn how to become a locksmith. In the evenings, he reads a lot, and after reading, writes, because at the age of seventeen he does not want to leave the world untouchable. However, he feels an emptiness inside his body, where, without stopping, life enters and leaves, like a distant hum, in which it is impossible to make out the words of a song. Zakhar Pavlovich, watching his son, advises: "Do not suffer, Sasha, - you are already so weak ..."

The war begins, then the revolution. On one October night, when he heard shooting in the city, Zakhar Pavlovich said to Sasha: “There fools take power, - maybe even life wiser.” In the morning they set off for the city and look for the most serious party to immediately sign up for it. All parties are placed in one state-owned house, and Zakhar Pavlovich walks around in offices, choosing a party according to his mind. At the end of the corridor, only one person sits behind the outer door - the rest are absent from power. "Will the end come soon?" - the person asks Zakhar Pavlovich. “Socialism, or what? In a year. Today, only institutions are occupied. ” “Then write us,” agrees the delighted Zakhar Pavlovich. At home, the father explains to his son his understanding of Bolshevism: "The Bolshevik must have an empty heart so that everything can fit ..."

Six months later, Alexander enters the opened railway courses, and then goes to the Polytechnic. But soon the teachings of Alexander Dvanov ceased, and for a long time. The party sends him to the front of the civil war - in the steppe city of Novokhopersk. Zakhar Pavlovich spent the whole day sitting with his son at the station, waiting for a passing train. They already talked about everything except love. When Sasha leaves, Zakhar Pavlovich returns home and reads algebra in the warehouses, not understanding anything, but gradually finding solace.

In Novokhopersk, Dvanov is accustomed to the steppe warring revolution. Soon a letter came from the province with an order to return him. On the way, instead of an escaped train driver, he leads a steam locomotive - and on a single-track road the train collides with an oncoming train. Sasha miraculously remains alive.

Having made a long and difficult journey, Dvanov returns home. He immediately contracted typhoid fever, dying out of life for eight months. Zakhar Pavlovich, desperate, makes a coffin for his son. But in the summer, Sasha is recovering. A neighbor, an orphan Sonya, comes to them in the evenings. Zakhar Pavlovich splits the coffin into the firebox, thinking with joy that now it’s not the coffin, but the crib, because Sonia will soon grow up and she and Sasha may have children.

The sponge sends Sasha to the province - "to seek communism among the initiative of the population." Dvanov goes from one village to another. He falls into the hands of the anarchists, from whom he was recaptured by a small detachment under the command of Stepan Kopenkin. Kopenkin participates in the revolution for the sake of his sense of love for Rosa Luxemburg. In one village where Kopenkin and Dvanov call in, they meet Sonya, who teaches children at school here.

Dvanov and Kopenkin, wandering around the province, meet many people, each of whom in his own way represents the construction of a new, yet unknown life. Dvanov met with Chepurny, chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of the county town of Chevengur. Dvanov likes the word Chevengur, which reminds him of the attracting hum of an unknown country. Chepurny talks about his city as a place in which both the blessing of life, and the accuracy of truth, and the grief of existence occur by themselves as needed. Although Dvanov wants to return home and continue his studies at the Polytechnic, he is fond of Chepurny's stories about Chevengur's socialism and decides to go to this city. “We are going to your land!” - says Chepurny and Kopenkin. “Let's look at the facts!”

Chevengur wakes up late; its inhabitants rested from centuries of oppression and could not rest. The revolution won the dreams of Chevengur County and made the soul the main profession. Having locked his horse of the Proletarian Force in the barn, Kopenkin walks along Chevengur, meeting people who are pale in appearance and alien in face. He asks Chepurny what these people do during the day. Chepurny answers that the human soul is the main profession, and its product is friendship and partnership. Kopenkin suggests that it should not be very good in Chevengur to organize a little grief, because communism must be caustic - for a good taste. They appoint an emergency commission, which compiles lists of the bourgeois who survived the revolution. Security officers shoot them. "Now our business is dead!" - Chepurny rejoices after the execution. "Cry!" - Chekists say to the wives of the murdered bourgeois and go to sleep from fatigue.

After the massacre of the bourgeoisie, Kopenkin still does not feel communism in Chevengur, and the Chekists are beginning to identify the half-bourgeois to free their lives from them. The half-bourgeoisie are gathered in a large crowd and driven out of the city into the steppe. The proletarians who remained in Chevengur and arrived in the city at the call of the Communists quickly eat up the food leftovers of the bourgeoisie, destroy all chickens and eat only plant food in the steppe. Chepurny expects that the ultimate happiness of life will develop by itself in the unhappily proletariat, because the happiness of life is a fact and a necessity. One Kopenkin walks along Chevengur without happiness, waiting for Dvanov to arrive and his assessment of a new life.

Dvanov arrives in Chevengur, but does not see communism from the outside: he must have hidden himself in people. And Dvanov guesses why the Bolsheviks-Chevengurts so desire communism: it is the end of history, the end of time, time goes only in nature, and in man there is longing. Dvanov invents a device that should turn sunlight into electricity, for which purpose mirrors were removed from all the frames in Chevengur and all the glass was assembled. But the device does not work. A tower was also built on which a fire was lit so that those wandering in the steppes could come to it. But no one is in the light of a lighthouse. Comrade Serbinov comes from Moscow to check the works of the Chevengurs and notes their futility. Chepurny explains this: "So we work not for good, but for each other." In his report, Serbinov writes that in Chevengur there are many happy but useless things.

Women are brought to Chevengur to continue life. Young Chevengurts only bask in with them, as with their mothers, because the air is already completely cold from the coming autumn.

Serbinov tells Dvanov about his meeting in Moscow with Sofia Alexandrovna - the very Sonya that Sasha remembered before Chevengur. Now Sofya Alexandrovna lives in Moscow and works in a factory. Serbinov says that she remembers Sasha as an idea. Serbinov is silent about his love for Sofya Alexandrovna.

A man runs to Chevengur and reports that Cossacks on horseback are moving to the city. A battle ensues. Serbinov perishes with thoughts of the distant Sofya Alexandrovna, who kept a trace of his body, Chepurny, the rest of the Bolsheviks, die. The city is occupied by Cossacks. Dvanov remains in the steppe over the mortally wounded Kopenkin. When Kopenkin dies, Dvanov sits on his horse the Proletarian Force and moves away from the city, into the open steppe. He rides for a long time and drives through the village in which he was born. The road leads Dvanov to the lake, in the depths of which his father had once rested. Dvanov sees a fishing rod that he forgot on the shore as a child. He forces the Proletarian Force to enter the water through the chest and, saying goodbye to it, goes off the saddle into the water - in search of the path that his father once walked in the curiosity of death ...

Zakhar Pavlovich comes to Chevengur in search of Sasha. None of the people in the city are there - just sitting by the brick house of Proshka and crying. “If you want, I'll give you the ruble again - bring me Sasha,” Zakhar Pavlovich asks. “I will bring it for nothing,” Prokofy promises and goes to look for Dvanov.