This article is a survey of theoretical work performed with respect to the structure of a shock wave in plasma in the absence of collisions; under these conditions motion of the medium is laminar. The magnetic field is taken to be non-zero. For the case when the magnetic field equals zero, the formulation of the problem for the structure of a shock wave in the absence of collisions is incorrect. The thermal energy behind the shock wave is concentrated in ion-acoustic waves appearing at the fron of the shock wave due to reversed Landau damping. Non–linear interaction of the waves leads to disordered, that is, thermal, oscillations. In the survey, non-linear waves in cold plasma that move at an acute or at a right angle with the magnetic field, shock waves for rare collisions, unsteady shock waves in a cold plasma without collisions and dissipation resulting from instabilities are discussed. Plasma heating has been investigated in an isolated wave for the case when the square of the thermal velocity can be neglected. The case of arbitrary temperature has shown that in a kinetic study, the structure of the shock wave is of an ergodic nature. This means that infinitesimal fluctuations of hydromagnetic values in front of the shock wave increase exponentially at first and then pulsate randomly without returning to the initial state. If one averages over these pulsations one obtains the effective heating. It is shown that this process leads to an increase of the course of thermonuclear reactions. The relaxation length is equal to the Debye radius. The question of the difference between electron and ion temperatures and also anisotropy of the pressure tensor behind the shock wave are discussed.