Ostap Bender
Ostap Bender, being in difficult straits, decides to play the same game, but runs into another trickster (Shura Balaganov, who becomes his accomplice) right in front of a bureaucrat in a Soviet office. Bender manages to get out of the gaffe by emotionally greeting Shura as a long-lost brother. Later they meet yet another "sibling" – Mikhail Panikovsky (), who is running for his life (he had ignored the convention, trespassed, and was caught red-handed by victims of yet another "brother").