A thief named Egor, having served a term in prison, goes to the country to meet his pen-friend Lyuba, a kind genial village woman. Egor comes to love Lyuba sincerely. Now he has friends, work and a beloved woman, he decides to break with his criminal past and start a new life. However, his former criminal associates interfere brutally.

1980. A small village in the Urals. Little Vitya learns that a newborn calf will forget its mother tomorrow. He decides to bring the calf back to his mother to another village at any cost. Yegor, Vitya’s elder brother, can’t let his younger one go alone. So, without telling his parents, the children go on a trip.

Documentary footage of late 1950s Russia covers such cities and towns as Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Yalta, the Black Sea, Kharkov, Sochi, Sukumi, Gori, Bukhara, Samarkand, Frunzo and Siberia.

Winter. Snow is sweeping, a blizzard howls. The wife of old Foma died. Fomka takes a coffin on a sleigh to a village graveyard along a deserted, dusty winter road, and he sees that Nastasiya is walking barefoot in the snow - alive, young, as on a photograph...