After leaving the colony, the thief recidivist Yegor Prokudin (Vasiliy Shukshin), nicknamed Gore, decides to go to the village where the blue-eyed stranger Lyuba (Lidiya Fedoseeva-Shukshina) lives with whom he corresponded - after all, he needs to wait a bit and look around. But life in the village destroys all of Yegor's plans, and he decides to forever break with the past. Now he has friends, work, a beloved woman. However, the criminals, former friends of Yegor, are not going to put up with his new lifestyle.