Property of the Republic is a 1971 Soviet two-part adventure film directed by Vladimir Bychkov. The detective story takes place during the Civil War in Russia. The picture was the 44th most attended domestic film in the Soviet Union.

Plot

In 1918, Soviet authorities seize a valuable art collection from the estate of Prince Tikhvinsky and transport it to Petrograd. However, when museum officials open the crates, they find the treasures have mysteriously vanished. Two years later, a painting from the missing collection is discovered with a street vendor in Petrograd. The case is reopened, and detective Makar Ovchinnikov is assigned to investigate. Meanwhile, a young icon painter, Innokentiy, is taken from a monastery to be formally trained. He ends up in a Petrograd orphanage, where he meets an adventurous man named Shilovsky, known as "The Marquis," who grows fond of him. Together with Tarakanov, the former steward of Prince Tikhvinsky, Marquis searches for some crates without revealing their contents to Innokentiy. They eventually find the collection in the Tikhvinsky family crypt. Tarakanov, intent on selling the treasures abroad, blackmails Marquis into helping him. They smuggle the collection out of Petrograd on a barge numbered 777. Meanwhile, former imperial investigator Prokofy Dobrovo, a retired criminologist, begins his own search.