Vasily Makarovich Shukshin famous writer, film director.

Once Vasily Makarovich Shukshin noticed that he was lucky in life good people... Perhaps it was all about his special vision of the world and people. A person who strives to see the good will invariably see it.

Vasily Makarovich recalled with a laugh how happiness almost smiled at him in the form of a referral to a flight school given by the military registration and enlistment office.

There it was necessary to collect a large number of certificates and, not trusting anyone with such a responsible matter, Vasily took him to Tambov region(there was a flight school there) documents in person, and, of course, lost them on the way.

He was ashamed to show up at the school without documents, and he also didn’t dare return to the military registration and enlistment office for new ones. He didn’t want to upset the good people at the military registration and enlistment office by “squandering” his happiness...

In general, Vasily Shukshin did not make a pilot. But this is perhaps for the better. Because, thanks to this non-random chance in the form fatal loss documents, we and the whole world now know Shukshin the writer, Shukshin the director and Shukshin the actor...

Origin

The Russian genius was born in the Altai region, in the village of Srostki on July 25, 1929 in a family of middle peasants. After collectivization began in the country, Vasily Shukshin’s parents joined the collective farm, but this, however, did not save his father from repression.

No one knew what his fate was after his arrest, but he was subsequently rehabilitated. Vasily’s mother, left with two children, married a second time, but even here her happiness did not last long. It thundered, and Vasily’s stepfather went to the front, never to return home again. A year later, a funeral was brought to the hut. Thus, already at the age of thirteen, Vasily becomes the breadwinner in the family.

From 1945 to 1947, young Shukshin first studied at an automotive technical school in Biysk, after graduating he worked as a rigger at different factories in Vladimir and Kaluga. In 1949 Vasily was drafted into the army. He served in the navy as a radio operator. For a whole year, from 1953 to 1954, he worked as a history teacher and school director in his home village.

Also in 1954, Vasily Shukshin decided to make an attempt to obtain higher education, and for this purpose I went straight to enroll in VGIK. In connection with Vasily Makarovich’s admission to this glorious cinematic university, there are many legends and tales, one of which says that initially, Shukshin planned to enter the acting department, because, in principle, he knew nothing about the existence of such a profession as a director.

family of V.M. Shukshina photo

Shukshin quite sincerely believed that actors in films themselves agree on who will play whom and all together decide what events will follow. Therefore, when the village boy found out that the profession of director exists in the world, his delight knew no bounds! Commanding artists - one could only dream about it!

He entered the workshop of M.I. Romm, who was first captivated and then finally conquered by Shukshin’s spontaneity. Indeed, who else, except Vasily Shukshin, could answer with complete honesty at an interview that the only “thick” book he read was “Martin Eden” by London, and that is why it is his favorite book. Romm at first decided that the guy, if he wasn’t joking, was already acting, damn, how talentedly he played such a village simpleton, not even suspecting that Vasily gave all the answers to the questions posed with complete seriousness.

On the advice of the same Mikhail Romm, Shukshin began sending his stories to all magazines in a row, in the hope that at least somewhere, someday they would publish them. And so it happened. His story “Two on a Cart” was published in the magazine “Smena”, which, however, did not cause any excitement either among readers or critics. And Shukshin himself, as always, demanding of himself, later did not include it in any of his collections. At the same time, Vasily Makarovich, already a fourth-year student, starred in Marlen Khutsiev’s film “Two Fedoras”.

film They Fought for the Motherland photo

All his life Vasily Makarovich was torn between cinema and literature. How many accusations he had to listen to from critics! Too rustic, somehow clumsy and somewhere unsaid. But already in the early sixties, Shukshin’s stories began to be published in the magazine “October”, and in 1963 the publishing house “Young Guard” decided to publish the first collection of Vasily Shukshin entitled “Rural People”, and in the same year the magazine “ New world” publishes several more stories from the Altai nugget.

“Kalina Krasnaya”, “There Lives Such a Guy”, “Stoves-Benches”... Infinitely talented, a little sad, keenly aware of social injustice, Shukshin’s lyrical hero is always touching and at the same time strong, like the Russian land itself, which gives birth to such great people... Died Vasily Shukshin 10/2/1974 on the set of the film “They Fought for the Motherland.”

Vasily Makarovich Shukshin entered literature with stories about the Russian village. The first collection of short stories, published in 1963, was called The Village People. However, the main problem of his work, unlike other writers who developed rural themes, was the problem of “interculture.” The writer was more concerned about the fate of the peasant, who, with the resettlement to the city, was cut off from his native soil, but also did not take root in the city. From his very first works, Shukshin puzzled critics: were his heroes positive or negative? It was impossible to answer this question with any certainty, because with their “eccentricities” they puzzled, from an unusual point of view they made us think about good and evil, about true and false beauty...

Critics did not immediately find the definition of “eccentric” for Shukshin’s hero. At first, Shukshin’s work was correlated with the work of “village” writers, then his heroes began to be called “intermediate”, due to the fact that they moved away from the village, but could not stick to the city, and therefore they suffered. If the action takes place in a village, then it seems that we are not talking about the village at all and not about a village resident. Shukshin’s hero was called “Crank” after the writer’s story, which was called “Crank,” was published in 1967 in Novy Mir. “I am more interested in the “history of the soul,” and for the sake of identifying it, I deliberately omit a lot from external life that person whose soul worries me,” wrote V. Shukshin, “essentially objecting” to those literary critics who called him a “writer of everyday life.” The human soul, restless, suffering, yearning, trying to “get over” itself - this is the cross-cutting image in his work.

He cannot forget the war in the story “Mille pardon, madam!” Bronka Pupkov, talented in hunting, is therefore “strange”, telling the story of how he attempted to assassinate Hitler. Bronka’s restless soul hurts from the fact that he did not have the chance to take part in hostilities at the front, and the fictional heroic story allows you to relieve this pain at least for a while. And Shukshin understands his hero, does not condemn him, but feels sorry for him, gives him the opportunity to experience a moment of “rejoicing” that did not happen to Bronka in real life.

The souls of Vasily Knyazev (“Weirdo”), Ivan Petin (“Raskas”), Venya Zyablitsky (“My son-in-law stole a car of firewood!”) suffer - you can’t list them all! - from human anger, which seems to be established in life as the norm: “...Venya was often angry with people, but was not afraid of them, now he suddenly realized with horror that they could be scary.”

The care of Syomka - “a drunkard, but an unsurpassed carpenter” - from the story “The Master” also turns into eccentricity. In an attempt to protect the church - a “bright stone fairy tale” created by an “unknown master” - from destruction, Syomka Lynx turns to both secular and ecclesiastical authorities for help. However, everywhere the “master” is refused, and he has no choice but to get drunk with the “priest’s money” (farm pay?) and not to stutter again “about the Talitsky church.”

A full picture of an exhausted soul modern man expressed by Shukshin in the story “I Believe!” The writer considered this story one of his best works. Notable in it is the image of the priest with whom the hero of the story, Maxim, shared his thoughts about the meaning of life. It turned out that the clergyman had no peace in his soul, although, by his own admission, “the soul of believers does not hurt.”

Reflecting on his hero Yegor Prokudin from the film story “Kalina Krasnaya,” the writer in one of his interviews explained his soul this way: “He organizes a wild revelry, throws money left and right, runs after every skirt. What is this? Burning life? Debauchery? The pursuit of joy and entertainment for a man exhausted in prison?

Not really. Least of all this. Yegor is not looking for women, not sweet life and not oblivion at all. A holiday for the soul. He searches, doesn’t find, and struggles. His soul is not in the right place. He yearns and rushes about, veers from one extreme to another, because he realizes somewhere that he is not living well, that his life has not worked out.”

Meanwhile, an epiphany comes to Yegor, he finds himself in love for a woman, for his mother, for native land, but at this moment the hero dies. You are probably familiar with Russian folk saying“I would be glad to go to heaven, but sins are not allowed.” The past is what Yegor had to pay for with his own life.

Shukshin was far from sentimental pathos in his depiction of folk characters. The writer’s “work notes” contain a rather harsh statement about his attitude towards the heroes he created: “In all the reviews there is only: “Shukshin loves his heroes... Shukshin describes his heroes with love...” What am I, an idiot, what Is it possible to love everyone?! Or blessed?..” Indeed, among his characters there are many who are boorish and evil, who evoke completely different feelings. So, for example, V. Rasputin very accurately pointed out two negative human types created by Shukshin, which symbolize modernity - this is the “so-called small man", who mastered the techniques of demagoguery, and Herostratus, who received "unprecedented operational space."

The personification of the first type is Gleb Kapustin, the hero of the story “Cut,” a harmful, unsympathetic little man who “cuts off” fellow countrymen who visit their native lands from time to time. In criticism, the image of Kapustin received directly opposite assessments: from a boorish “demagogue” to a man who cuts the truth, regardless of faces. V. Korobov noted that Shukshin “put some of his own dear, hard-won thoughts into the mouth of this character.” It is quite possible, but this does not give grounds to idealize Gleb. Still, in the words of Shukshin himself, “if we are strong and truly smart in something, it is in a good deed.” The second type - "Herostratus" - is fully revealed in the image of Nikolai Sergeevich Shurygin - the hero of the story "Strong Man". It is by this name that the Shukshinsky type of an enterprising, self-satisfied person was defined in criticism. At the end of the story, there is a echo of Gogol’s image of the “three birds” from the poem “Dead Souls”: “The motorcycle taxied out of the village, thrust a sparkling blade of light into the night and rushed along a well-trodden, flat road towards the regional center. Shurygin respected fast driving.” This is our contemporary who, without hesitation, demolishes a church built back in the 17th century in order to get bricks “for free” to build a pigsty. Shurygin’s entrepreneurial spirit, trampling shrines, elevates this image to the type of “dead souls” depicted by N.V. Gogol.

Vasily Shukshin is a Russian writer who lived in the twentieth century. He was a man difficult fate. Shukshin was born in 1929 in the small village of Srostki (Altai Territory). It was hard time. As a child, the future writer lost his father. He was repressed. My stepfather died in the war. Shukshin studied at an automobile technical school, worked as a mechanic in different cities Soviet Union. Served in the army. This is how his first post-war years passed.

The path to vocation

The future writer completed his secondary education only in the early 50s. He never finished automobile technical school. Shukshin received his certificate in his native village. In Srostki, Vasily Makarovich worked as a teacher and was even a school director.

How did it happen that after several years spent in his native village, Shukshin went to Moscow to enter VGIK? What thoughts tormented him during these years? Shukshin would later describe the feelings that stirred his soul in his famous village stories. With the proceeds from the sale of the cow, the future actor and director left for the capital. He followed his heart.

First creative achievements

Feeling a gift for writing, Shukshin applies to the screenwriting department, but enters the directing department. His teacher was the famous author of the films “Nine Days of One Year” and “Ordinary Fascism.” It was this venerable director who advised young Shukshin to publish his stories. Literary success did not come immediately. Only in the early 60s were some works published.

The first directorial work went unnoticed, but Vasily Makarovich quickly gained recognition as an actor. Shukshin's work began with an episode in the film "Quiet Don". Two years later, the actor starred in his first leading role. He was invited by an outstanding director (the film “Two Fyodors”). Shukshin's acting career was going well. Directors often approached him with job offers. Approximately twice a year, films featuring the actor were released in the Soviet Union.

Cinema and literature

Shukshin's directorial work officially begins in the 60s. Vasily Makarovich gets a job at the Gorky film studio. Shukshin is considered a promising writer. Vasily Makarovich made his first film based on his own stories. The film “There Lives a Guy Like This” received good feedback public and critics. This cheerful comedy was awarded prizes at festivals in Leningrad and Venice.

The next ten years, Shukshin's work as a director was not particularly productive. His film about the uprising of Stepan Razin was rejected State Committee in cinematography. However, this time did not pass without a trace. Vasily Makarovich made two films and published a collection of stories “Village Residents”. In addition, during these ten years he married twice and became the father of three daughters.

Personal life

Shukshin's first marriage was unsuccessful. His wife, Maria Shumskaya, was a fellow villager of the writer. They registered their marriage in Srostki, but returned from the registry office separately, and since then they have lived separately, he in the capital, she in the village.

The writer's personal life was difficult. In Moscow he became addicted to alcohol. Because of this addiction, the writer’s second marriage to Victoria Sofronova broke up. In this family, Shukshin’s first child was born - a girl. In his third marriage to actress Lydia Fedoseeva, Vasily Makarovich had two daughters - Maria and Olga.

The main characters are people from the village

Shukshin's literary work is connected with the Soviet village and its inhabitants. The heroes of his stories surprised readers and critics with their strangeness. The characters in Vasily Makarovich’s books cannot be called unambiguously positive or negative. They are capable of both good and bad. Shukshin's heroes are impetuous and impulsive. They often take illogical actions. These people are independent and deeply unhappy. They commit rash acts with dire consequences because their souls have been trampled by treason, betrayal and injustice.

Shukshin's life and work are interconnected. The writer comes from a village. He knew the prototypes of his heroes firsthand. Often the characters in Shukshin's stories cannot understand what is happening to them. Why are they unhappy? And they themselves cannot explain and justify their actions. It's all about the human soul. She knows, This intuitive understanding is in conflict with the reality of the unfortunate fate of the village idiot, drunkard or ex-convict.

Temple as a symbol

Shukshin's stories often mention the church. She acts as a sublime symbol of purity and morality. And, as a rule, it is subject to destruction. In the work “The Master,” the village drunkard Semka the carpenter tries to save the local church. But all his attempts fail. And in the essay “A Strong Man,” the hero destroys a temple in order to get bricks for the construction of a barn. The life and work of Shukshin tell about moral decline.

Attention to everyday life

Critics often reproached Vasily Makarovich's stories for being fictional. This means that, in their opinion, Shukshin paid too much attention to peasant everyday life. It would seem that there is every reason for such accusations. The writer depicts in detail the unsightly life of his heroes, but this technique is artistically justified. Village people are not used to thinking about their fate in philosophical terms. They simply live, work, eat and sleep, and go about their daily routine. And only a restless soul makes itself felt from time to time. Shukshin’s characters often themselves do not understand the causes of suffering, and therefore react to them sharply and violently.

Different essays - one issue

The diversity of folk characters in Shukshin’s work is clearly manifested in the story “And in the morning they woke up.” This is one of the writer's most famous works. In the work, the author talks about the morning awakening of people who find themselves in a sobering-up station. Everyone remembers yesterday and tells their story to those gathered. Among them are people from all walks of life: a plumber, a tractor driver, a former prisoner and even a professor.

The central place in Shukshin’s work is occupied by the novel “I Came to Give You Freedom.” This work is dedicated historical event- peasant uprising led by Stepan Razin. The hero of the novel is somewhat reminiscent of the eccentrics from the writer’s village stories. Stepan Razin is the same strong, independent, restless person with a keen sense of justice.

Characteristics

And whose work is studied in many schools and universities, he wrote mainly in the short story genre. Most of his writings demonstrate similar problematics. The writer does not idealize his heroes. As a rule, his stories are far from examples of sublimity of character and purity of thoughts. The author rarely explains the actions of the characters. In each of Shukshin's stories - life situation, standard or unique.

The creativity of Vasily Shukshin is very diverse. However, all of his characters are somewhat similar. Their common feature- unrealization. This manifests itself in different ways. In the story “Cut,” the village man Gleb Kapustin loves to humiliate his fellow villagers who have achieved success. He is a smart and erudite person. However, it does not find useful application his qualities while working at a rural sawmill. Hence the dissatisfaction. Gleb doesn't drink and doesn't smoke. He finds an original outlet for his wounded pride by humiliating people who are more fortunate in life than him.

The life and work of Vasily Shukshin reflect the thoughts of his heroes. Kolya Paratov (the story “The wife saw off her husband to Paris”) is humiliated by his husband Valentin. She constantly reproaches him that, having no profession, he earns little. Kolya intuitively senses a way out and strives to return to the village. After all, the city has different values; not everything is measured by money. But the child holds on. Kolya starts drinking and threatens his wife with violence. Finding himself at a dead end in life, he commits suicide.

Central cinematic work

Vasily Shukshin, whose biography and work attracts the attention of all art lovers, has gone down in the history of Russian literature. He didn't make very many films. His directorial works are directly related to literary creativity. The central cinematic work is “Kalina Krasnaya”.

This film tells the story of Yegor Prokudin. A repeat offender, he was recently released from prison. Egor goes to the village to visit Lyuba. He met her in absentia, through prison correspondence. It turned out that in the village Yegor found not only love, friendship and a job he liked. For the first time in his life he understood what it meant to live correctly, according to God's laws. But the past does not let Yegor go. His accomplices find him. Prokudin refuses to return to his former life. For this they kill him.

In many of Shukshin’s works there is a motif of the village as salvation. It is in her that Yegor Prokudin finds happiness. Kolya Paratov rushes to the village from the story “The wife saw off her husband to Paris.” In villages people are closer to nature. Modern things have not yet touched their souls. But the village is just a symbol of lost happiness. Rural residents suffer from the same internal problems as urban residents. The great Russian writer Vasily Makarovich Shukshin told us about this.

Vasily Shukshin was born on July 25, 1929 in the village of Srostki, Altai Territory. He grew up in a family of middle peasants. During the period of collectivization, Shukshin's father was arrested and then shot.

The future writer graduated from a seven-year school and entered an automobile technical school in Biysk. After studying for less than three years, the young man decided to give up education and went to work on a collective farm to feed his family. In 1946, Vasily left his native village and moved to Kaluga region, where he got a job at a tractor factory as a mechanic. Then Shukshin worked in Vladimir and the Moscow region until the call to join the army came. I had the opportunity to serve as a sailor in the Baltic Fleet, and later Vasily became a radio operator.

During these years, Shukshin tries to write stories that free time retells it to his colleagues. In 1953, Vasily was diagnosed with a stomach ulcer, and he was transferred to the reserve. The young sailor returned to his native village, where he passed his exams as an external student and got a job in local school teacher of Russian language.

But cherished dream Shukshin was a cinematographer. Vasily managed to enroll in the directing department at VGIK. During his studies, the young author continued to write stories, which he sent to many magazines.

In 1956, Shukshin played a very tiny episode in S. Gerasimov’s film “Quiet Don”, and two years later he made his debut in the leading role in M. Khutsiev’s film “Two Fedoras”. At this time, Shukshin’s story “Two on a Cart” was published by the magazine “Smena”. In 1963, his collection “Rural Residents” was published for the first time.

Shukshin’s first directorial project, the full-length film “There Lives Such a Guy,” was released in 1964. The public really liked this film and won the Grand Prix at the Venice International Film Festival. Two years later, Shukshin completed work on the film “Your Son and Brother.” The film received the State Prize of the RSFSR named after the Vasilyev brothers. At the same time, the writer released a collection of short stories, “There, Away.”

For my acting career Vasily Makarovich played about 30 roles in films. He acted as a screenwriter and director in six films. He has written about a hundred stories, which were included in the collections “Conversations under a Clear Moon,” “Countrymen,” and “There, Away.” Shukshin wrote the film stories “Call me into the bright distance”, “Point of view”, “Kalina Krasnaya”, “Until the third roosters”, “ Energetic people”, historical novels “Lubavins”, “I came to give you freedom”, as well as many plays and scripts. Shukshin’s creative path is marked with the title “Honored Artist of the RSFSR.”

On October 2, 1974, the writer, director and actor died on the set of his new film “They Fought for the Motherland.”

In his works, Shukshin often compared the lives of villagers and city dwellers, using colorful colloquial speech, described in detail the life of his fellow countrymen. Since he himself was born and raised in the village, the problems of peasant life were well known to him.

The plots of the writer’s works are quite simple - these are ordinary scenes from life. But the main motive of Shukshin’s creativity is not the external surroundings, but the totality of wisdom, feelings and spiritual impulses. The plot serves only as an excuse to start a conversation.

From the pen of the author came an original gallery of Russian people. Literary heroes Shukshina is always natural and lively. Sometimes they spontaneously protest against the everyday quagmire, the absurdity of life. But it is in this protest that the writer finds a manifestation of the spiritual nature of the individual. Shukshin does not idealize the characters in his novels and short stories. Among them are many unlucky sages and dreamers, people with oddities and eccentricities. Often, for literary research, the author depicted a person during a period of breakdown and mental stress.

Shukshin's literary language is rich and original. The characters' speech is full of dialects and "wrong" words. But often in the author’s statements themselves it is difficult to grasp the line between colloquial and literary speech. This line is constantly blurred by neologisms, slang and colloquial words, which give the works brightness and originality. For early creativity Shukshin is characterized by an abundance of metaphors close to folk poetics.

Vasily Makarovich's stories are often of a moralizing nature and are characterized by laconicism. But the simplicity and brevity of the exposition is full of non-standard thoughts. The author managed to express main idea just a couple of sentences. Shukshin could penetrate deeply into the soul and touch a nerve. According to the writer himself, a person of art must be able to convey his thoughts so that he is understood silently. And they silently expressed gratitude.

Soviet literature

Vasily Makarovich Shukshin

Biography

SHUKSHIN, VASILY MAKAROVICH (1929−1974), Russian prose writer, playwright, film director, film actor. Born on July 25, 1929 in the village of Srostki, Biysk region Altai Territory in a peasant family. From his adolescence he worked on a collective farm in his homeland, then in production in Central Russia. In 1949-1952 he served in the navy. Upon his return, he worked as the director of an evening school in the village of Srostki. In 1954 he entered the directing department of VGIK, studied in the workshop of M. Romm. During his studies, Shukshin's classmates and friends were future famous directors - A. Tarkovsky, A. Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, etc. As a student he began acting in films, and after graduating from the institute he made films based on his own scripts. The film Such a Guy Lives received in 1964 the highest award of the Venice International Film Festival - the Golden Lion of St. Mark." Shukshin's films Your son and brother, Call me into the bright distance, Strange people, Stove benches were a great success. The film Kalina Krasnaya was shot by Shukshin based on the film story of the same name, written in 1973. Shukshin’s cinematographic merits were awarded the Prize. Vasiliev brothers, USSR State Prize, Lenin Prize (posthumously).

The heroes of Shukshin's films were most often village people, according to various reasons found themselves in the city. The theme of a village man, torn from his usual environment and not finding new support in life, became one of the main themes of Shukshin’s stories. In the film story Kalina the Red, it takes on a tragic sound: the loss of life guidelines breaks the fate of the main character, former thief and prisoner Yegor Prokudin, and leads him to death.

In 1958, Shukshin’s first story was published in the magazine “Smena”, and in 1963 his first prose collection, Rural Residents, was published. During Shukshin's lifetime, collections of his stories There, Away (1968), Countrymen (1970), Characters (1973), Conversations under a Clear Moon (1974) were also published. The collection My Brother, prepared for publication, was published after the author’s death, in 1975. In total, Shukshin wrote 125 stories during his life.

Shukshin’s stories, thematically related to “village prose,” differed from its main stream in that the author’s attention was focused not so much on the foundations of folk morality, but on the complex psychological situations in which the heroes found themselves. The city attracted Shukshinsky’s hero as a center cultural life, and repelled with his indifference to the fate of an individual person. Shukshin felt this situation as a personal drama. “So it turned out for me by the age of forty,” he wrote, “that I am not completely urban, and no longer rural. A terribly uncomfortable position. It’s not even between two chairs, but rather like this: one foot on the shore, the other in the boat. And it’s impossible not to swim, and it’s kind of scary to swim..."

This one is complicated psychological situation determined unusual behavior Shukshin's heroes, whom he called " strange people", "unlucky people." The name “eccentric” (based on the story of the same name, 1967) has taken root in the minds of readers and critics. It is the “eccentrics” who are the main characters of the stories collected by Shukshin into one of his best collections, Characters. Each of the characters is named by name and surname - the author seems to emphasize their absolute authenticity in life. “Freaks” - Kolya Skalkin, who splashed ink on his boss’s suit (Zero-zero whole), Spiridon Rastorguev, trying to win the love of someone else’s wife (Suraz), etc. - do not cause the author’s condemnation. In the inability to express oneself, in an outwardly funny rebellion common man Shukshin saw spiritual content distorted by meaningless reality and lack of culture, the despair of people who do not know how to resist everyday anger and aggressiveness. This is exactly how the hero of the story Obida Sashka Ermolaev appears. At the same time, Shukshin did not idealize his characters. In the story Srezal, he showed the village demagogue Gleb Kapustin, enjoying what he succeeds stupid statement“click on the nose” of smart fellow villagers. The non-resistance Makar Zherebtsov, the hero of the story of the same name, during the week taught the village people kindness and patience “with the understanding of many millions of people,” and on weekends he encouraged them to play dirty tricks on each other, explaining his behavior by the fact that his life’s purpose was “to give advice on a large scale.” give." In modern Russian literature, Shukshin's stories have remained a unique artistic phenomenon - original imagery and a lively, natural style in its simplicity. In the novel Lyubavina (1965), Shukshin showed the story big family, closely intertwined with the history of Russia in the 20th century. - in particular during Civil War. Both of these stories appeared full of such dramatic collisions that the publication of the second part of the novel became possible only during the period of perestroika, in 1987. Shukshin also failed to adapt the film adaptation of his novel about Stepan Razin I came to give you freedom (1971). Shukshin died in the village of Kletskaya, Volgograd region. October 2, 1974

Vasily Makarovich Shukshin was born into a peasant family on July 25, 1929 in the village of Srostki, Altai Territory. Since childhood, Shukshin had to work. At first he worked on the collective farm of his village, and soon in Central Russia in production.

In 1949-1952 he served in the navy. Since 1952, after returning from service to his homeland, he worked as the director of an evening school in his village.

In 1954 he went to study at the directing department. Also in student years Shukshin starred in films, and in his senior year he was already filming from scripts of his own writing. Even his early films were a great success among audiences.

In 1964, his film “There Lives a Guy Like This” received the “Golden Lion of St. Mark" - the highest award of the Venice International Festival.

His talent received many awards: the prize named after. Vasiliev Brothers, USSR State Prize, and posthumously he was awarded the Lenin Prize.

His heroes were people from the village who, for some reason, ended up in the city. He considered himself “not completely urban, but no longer rural either.” He called his heroes “strange” or “unlucky” people, and critics and viewers called them “freaks.”