The family of a young peasant woman Katya (Veronica Buzhinskaya) is left without a single food source when their cow dies.

To save money for a new Jersey, Katya leaves her native village to work in Leningrad.

Once she is in the big city, she falls in with a bad crowd by associating with the thief Syomka Zhgut (Valery Solovtsov).

The girl starts to sell Reinette apples to earn money for a living and for the aforementioned new cow.

Once on the street, Katya meets a downtrodden homeless intellectual Vadka Zavrazhina (Fedor Nikitin), nicknamed "Tiligent".