Pavel and Pavelina leave their rural countryside homes and move to Moscow to find work. Once there, they find that urban life is not what they thought it was and have to endure bitter hardships as they try to find work and places to live. The two meet for the first time during a fight at a bar, when they are arrested by police along with others in the building. The understand each other's troubles and band together to avoid both the police and criminal gangs that plagued Moscow toward the end of the Soviet Union.