In early Soviet literature, the village theme is almost always a story about the reconstruction of the village, opening up new perspectives. But in the 50s, the tone changed: a new generation of authors discovered their own drama and even tragedy in the life of the village. Mention of collectivization and dispossession can only be done tangentially; for the most part we are talking about the difficulties of wartime and individual current shortcomings, but starting with Solzhenitsyn’s “Matryonin’s Court,” village prose rises to a new level of generalization. In the 1970s, Astafiev and Rasputin spoke about what was happening in the village as a civilizational and moral catastrophe: harmonious old world, full of righteousness and a special rural “lady,” perishes under the pressure of a soulless technogenic civilization. The disintegration of peasant life among the villagers is equated with the disintegration of the soul or moral law; something sacred and important, without which the world cannot stand.

• King fish

  Victor Astafiev 1976

  “The King Fish” is a “story within stories” about life in the taiga. In the title story, Ignatyich, the most resourceful and resourceful man in the village, also known for his incredible luck in fishing, enters into a mortal battle with a giant sturgeon. The Soviet analogue of “The Old Man and the Sea” has a hidden religious overtone: the fight between a man and a fish is understood here not just as a battle with fate, but as retribution from higher powers - for a passion for poaching, for bullying a former bride and, in general, for grave sins. Another part of the story is the story of the rescue of the girl Eli, who ended up in the taiga with a geologist friend: this friend, named Goga, also caught the king fish - using a disabled war veteran’s medal instead of a spinner, for which he paid. The main theme of Astafiev’s book is the confrontation between man and nature, which tests moral qualities; Only love and unity help to survive here. The story, published in a disfigured form, enjoyed enormous popularity in the 70s. Not far from Krasnoyarsk there is a monument to Astafiev in the form of a sturgeon escaping from a net.

In Russian literature, genre village prose noticeably different from all other genres. What is the reason for this difference? You can talk about this for an extremely long time, but still not come to a final conclusion. This happens because the scope of this genre may not fit within the description of rural life. This genre may also include works that describe the relationship between people in the city and the countryside, and even works in which main character not a villager at all, but in spirit and idea, these works are nothing more than village prose.

IN foreign literature There are very few works of this type. There are significantly more of them in our country. This situation is explained not only by the peculiarities of the formation of states and regions, their national and economic specifics, but also by the character, “portrait” of each people inhabiting a given area. In countries Western Europe, the peasantry played an insignificant role, and all national life was in full swing in the cities. In Russia, since ancient times, the peasantry occupied the most main role in history. Not in terms of power (on the contrary - the peasants were the most powerless), but in spirit - the peasantry was and, probably, remains to this day driving force Russian history. It was from the dark, ignorant peasants that Stenka Razin, and Emelyan Pugachev, and Ivan Bolotnikov came out; it was because of the peasants, or rather because of serfdom, that that cruel struggle took place, the victims of which were tsars, poets, and part of the outstanding Russian intelligentsia XIX century. Thanks to this, works covering this topic occupy a special place in the literature.

Modern rural prose plays a big role in the literary process these days. This genre today rightfully occupies one of the leading places in terms of readability and popularity. The modern reader is concerned about the problems that are raised in novels of this genre. These are issues of morality, love of nature, good, kind attitude towards people and other problems that are so relevant today. Among contemporary writers who have written or are writing in the genre of village prose, the leading place is occupied by such writers as Viktor Petrovich Astafiev (“The Fish Tsar”, “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess”), Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin (“Live and Remember”, “Farewell to Matera” "), Vasily Makarovich Shukshin (“Village Residents”, “Lyubavins”, “I Came to Give You Freedom”) and others.

Vasily Makarovich Shukshin occupies a special place in this series. His unique creativity has attracted and will continue to attract hundreds of thousands of readers not only in our country, but also abroad. After all, it is rare to meet such a master of the folk word, such a sincere admirer native land what an outstanding writer he was.

Vasily Makarovich Shukshin was born in 1929, in the village of Srostki Altai Territory. And through the entire life of the future writer, the beauty and severity of those places ran like a red thread. It was thanks to his small homeland that Shukshin learned to appreciate the land, the work of man on this land, and learned to understand the harsh prose of rural life. Already from the very beginning creative path he discovered new ways in depicting man. His characters turned out to be unusual and in their own way social status, both in life maturity and moral experience. Having already become a fully mature young man, Shukshin goes to the center of Russia. In 1958, he made his debut in cinema (“Two Fedoras”), as well as in literature (“A Story in a Cart”). In 1963, Shukshin released his first collection - “Rural Residents”. And in 1964, his film “There Lives Such a Guy” was awarded main prize at the festival in Venice. World fame comes to Shukshin. But he doesn't stop there. Years of intense and painstaking work. For example: in 1965, his novel “The Lyubavins” was published and at the same time the film “There Lives Such a Guy” appeared on the screens of the country. Just from this example alone one can judge with what dedication and intensity the artist worked.

Or maybe it’s haste, impatience? Or the desire to immediately establish oneself in literature on the most solid - “novel” basis? This is certainly not the case. Shukshin wrote only two novels. And as Vasily Makarovich himself said, he was interested in one topic: the fate of the Russian peasantry. Shukshin managed to touch a nerve, penetrate our souls and make us ask in shock: “What is happening to us”? Shukshin did not spare himself, he was in a hurry to have time to tell the truth, and with this truth to bring people together. He was obsessed with one thought that he wanted to think out loud. And be understood! All the efforts of Shukshin, the creator, were aimed at this. He believed: “Art is, so to speak, to be understood...” From his first steps in art, Shukshin explained, argued, proved and suffered when he was not understood. They tell him that the film “There Lives a Guy Like This” is a comedy. He is perplexed and writes an afterword to the film. At a meeting with young scientists, a tricky question is thrown at him, he hesitates, and then sits down to write an article (“Monologue on the Stairs”).

Where did the writer get the material for his works? Everywhere, where people live. What material is this, what characters? That material and those characters that have rarely entered the sphere of art before. And it was necessary for a great talent to emerge from the depths of the people, to tell the simple, strict truth about his fellow countrymen with love and respect. And this truth became a fact of art and aroused love and respect for the author himself. Shukshin's hero turned out to be not only unfamiliar, but also partly incomprehensible. Lovers of “distilled” prose demanded a “beautiful hero”, they demanded that the writer invent, so as not to disturb his own soul. The polarity of opinions and harshness of assessments arose, oddly enough, precisely because the hero was not fictional. And when the hero represents real person, he cannot be only moral or only immoral. And when a hero is invented to please someone, there is complete immorality. Isn’t it from here, from a lack of understanding of Shukshin’s creative position, that creative errors in the perception of his heroes come from. After all, what is striking about his heroes is the spontaneity of action, the logical unpredictability of an act: he will either unexpectedly accomplish a feat, or suddenly escape from the camp three months before the end of his sentence.

Shukshin himself admitted: “I am most interested in exploring the character of a non-dogmatic person, a person not trained in the science of behavior. Such a person is impulsive, gives in to impulses, and therefore is extremely natural. But he always has a reasonable soul.” The writer's characters are truly impulsive and extremely natural. And they do this by virtue of internal moral concepts, perhaps not yet realized by themselves. They have a heightened reaction to the humiliation of man by man. This reaction takes on a variety of forms. Sometimes it leads to the most unexpected results.

Seryoga Bezmenov was burned by the pain of his wife’s betrayal, and he cut off two of his fingers (“Fingerless”).

A bespectacled man in a store was insulted by a boorish salesman, and for the first time in his life he got drunk and ended up in a sobering-up station (“And in the morning they woke up...”), etc. and so on.

In such situations, Shukshin’s characters may even commit suicide (“Suraz”, “The wife saw off her husband to Paris”). No, they cannot stand insults, humiliation, resentment. They offended Sashka Ermolaev (“Obida”), the “unbending” aunt-seller was rude. So what? Happens. But Shukshin’s hero will not endure, but will prove, explain, break through the wall of indifference. And... he grabs the hammer. Or he will leave the hospital, as Vanka Teplyashin did, as Shukshin did (“Klyauza”). A very natural reaction of a conscientious and kind person...

No Shukshin does not idealize his strange, unlucky heroes. Idealization generally contradicts the art of a writer. But in each of them he finds something that is close to him. And now, it is no longer possible to make out who is calling to humanity there - the writer Shukshin or Vanka Teplyashin.

Shukshinsky’s hero, faced with a “narrow-minded gorilla,” may, in despair, grab a hammer himself in order to prove to the wrongdoer that he is right, and Shukshin himself may say: “Here you must immediately hit him on the head with a stool - the only way to tell the boor that he did something wrong” ( “Borya”). This is a purely “Shuksha” collision, when truth, conscience, honor cannot prove that they are who they are. And it’s so easy, so simple for a boor to reproach a conscientious person. And more and more often, the clashes of Shukshin’s heroes become dramatic for them. Shukshin was considered by many to be a comic, “joke” writer, but over the years the one-sidedness of this statement, as well as another - about the “compassionate lack of conflict” of Vasily Makarovich’s works, became more and more clearly revealed. The plot situations of Shukshin's stories are poignant. In the course of their development, comedic situations can be dramatized, and something comic is revealed in dramatic situations. With an enlarged depiction of unusual, exceptional circumstances, the situation suggests their possible explosion, a catastrophe, which, having broken out, breaks the usual course of life of the heroes. Most often, the actions of the heroes are determined by the strongest desire for happiness, for the establishment of justice (“Autumn”).

Did Shukshin write about the cruel and gloomy property owners Lyubavins, the freedom-loving rebel Stepan Razin, old men and old women, did he talk about the breaking of the entryway, about the inevitable departure of a person and his farewell to all earthly people, did he stage films about Pashka Kogolnikov, Ivan Rastorguev, the Gromov brothers, Yegor Prokudin , he depicted his heroes against the backdrop of specific and generalized images - a river, a road, an endless expanse of arable land, a home, unknown graves. Shukshin understands this central image with a comprehensive content, solving a cardinal problem: what is a person? What is the essence of his existence on Earth?

The study of the Russian national character, which has developed over the centuries, and the changes in it associated with the turbulent changes of the twentieth century, is strong point creativity of Shukshin.

Gravity and attraction to the earth are the strongest feeling of the farmer. Born with man, it is a figurative representation of the greatness and power of the earth, the source of life, the guardians of time and the generations that have passed away with it in art. The earth is a poetically meaningful image in Shukshin’s art: the native house, the arable land, the steppe, the Motherland, the mother - the damp earth... Folk-figurative associations and perceptions create an integral system of national, historical and philosophical concepts: about the infinity of life and the goals of generations receding into the past , about the Motherland, about spiritual connections. The comprehensive image of the earth - the Motherland - becomes the center of gravity of the entire content of Shukshin’s work: the main collisions, artistic concepts, moral and aesthetic ideals and poetics. The enrichment and renewal, even the complication of the original concepts of land and home in Shukshin’s work is quite natural. His worldview, life experience, heightened sense of homeland, artistic insight, born in new era life of the people, determined such a unique prose.

V. Shukshin’s first attempt to understand the destinies of the Russian peasantry at historical junctures was the novel “The Lyubavins.” It was about the early 20s of our century. But the main character, the main embodiment, the focus of the Russian national character for Shukshin was Stepan Razin. It is to him, his uprising, that Shukshin’s second and last novel “I came to give you freedom” is dedicated. It is difficult to say when Shukshin first became interested in Razin’s personality. But already in the collection “Rural Residents” a conversation about him begins. There was a moment when the writer realized that Stepan Razin, in some facets of his character, was absolutely modern, that he was the concentration national characteristics Russian people. And this, a precious discovery for himself, Shukshin wanted to convey to the reader. Today's people acutely feel how “the distance between modernity and history has shortened.” Writers, turning to the events of the past, study them from the perspective of people of the twentieth century, seek and find those moral and spiritual values ​​that are necessary in our time.

Several years pass after finishing work on the novel “Lyubavina,” and Shukshin tries to explore the processes taking place in the Russian peasantry at a new artistic level. It was his dream to direct a film about Stepan Razin. He returned to her constantly. If we take into account the nature of Shukshin’s talent, inspired and nourished by living life, and take into account that he himself was going to play the role of Stepan Razin, then one could expect from the film a new deep penetration into Russian national character. One of best books Shukshin is called “Characters” - and this name itself emphasizes the writer’s passion for what developed in certain historical conditions.

In stories written in last years, more and more often a passionate, sincere author’s voice is heard, addressed directly to the reader. Shukshin spoke about the most important, painful issues, revealing his artistic position. It was as if he felt that his heroes could not say everything, but they definitely had to say it. More and more “sudden”, “fictional” stories from Vasily Makarovich Shukshin himself appear. Such an open movement towards “unheard-of simplicity”, a kind of nakedness, is in the traditions of Russian literature. Here, in fact, it is no longer art, it is going beyond its limits, when the soul screams about its pain. Now the stories are entirely the author's word. The interview is a naked revelation. And everywhere questions, questions, questions. The most important things about the meaning of life.

Art should teach goodness. Shukshin saw the most precious wealth in the ability of a pure human heart to do good. “If we are strong and truly smart in anything, it is in a good deed,” he said.

Vasily Makarovich Shukshin lived with this, believed in it.

List of used literature

• 1. V. Horn Disturbed Soul
• 2. V. Horn The fate of the Russian peasantry

The genre of village prose in Russian literature (using the example of Shukshin’s work)

Story novel

comedy

hero

movies image

creativity

novel writer

Vasily Makarovich Shukshin was born in 1929, in the village of Srostki, Altai Territory. And through the entire life of the future writer, the beauty and severity of those places ran like a red thread. It is thanks to his small homeland

Shukshin learned to appreciate the land, the work of man on this land, and learned to understand the harsh prose of rural life. From the very beginning of his creative career, he discovered new ways in depicting a person. His heroes turned out to be unusual in their social status, life maturity, and moral experience. Having already become a fully mature young man, Shukshin goes to the center of Russia. In 1958, he made his film debut (“Two Fedoras”), as well as in literature (“A Story in a Cart”). In 1963, Shukshin released his first collection, “Rural Residents.” And in 1964, his film “There Lives a Guy Like This” was awarded the main prize at the Venice Film Festival. World fame comes to Shukshin. But he doesn't stop there. Years of intense and painstaking work follow. For example, in 1965 his novel “The Lyubavins” was published and at the same time the film “There Lives Such a Guy” appeared on the country’s screens. Just from this example alone one can judge with what dedication and intensity the artist worked.

Or maybe it’s haste, impatience? Or the desire to immediately establish oneself in literature on the most solid - “novel” - basis? This is certainly not the case. Shukshin wrote only two novels. And as Vasily Makarovich himself said, he was interested in one topic: the fate of the Russian peasantry. Shukshin managed to touch a nerve, penetrate our souls and make us ask in shock: “What is happening to us”? Shukshin did not spare himself, he was in a hurry to have time to tell the truth, and with this truth to bring people together. He was obsessed with one thought that he wanted to think out loud. And be understood! All the efforts of Shukshin, the creator, were aimed at this. He believed: “Art is, so to speak, to be understood...” From his first steps in art, Shukshin explained, argued, proved and suffered when he was not understood. They tell him that the film “There Lives a Guy Like This” is a comedy. He is perplexed and writes an afterword to the film. A tricky question is thrown at him at a meeting with young scientists, he hesitates, and then sits down to write an article (“Monologue on the Stairs”).

Where did the writer get the material for his works? Everywhere, where people live. What material is this, what characters? That material and those characters that have rarely entered the sphere of art before. And it was necessary for a great talent to emerge from the depths of the people, to tell the simple, strict truth about his fellow countrymen with love and respect. And this truth became a fact of art and aroused love and respect for the author himself. Shukshin's hero turned out to be not only unfamiliar, but also partly incomprehensible. Lovers of “distilled” prose demanded a “beautiful hero”, they demanded that the writer invent, so as not to disturb his own soul. The polarity of opinions and harshness of assessments arose, oddly enough, precisely because the hero was not fictional. And when the hero represents a real person, he cannot be only moral or only immoral. And when a hero is invented to please someone, there is complete immorality. Isn’t it from here, from a lack of understanding of Shukshin’s creative position, that creative errors in the perception of his heroes come from.

After all, what is striking about his heroes is the spontaneity of action, the logical unpredictability of an act: he will either unexpectedly accomplish a feat, or suddenly escape from the camp three months before the end of his sentence.

Shukshin himself admitted: “I am most interested in exploring the character of a non-dogmatic person, a person not trained in the science of behavior. Such a person is impulsive, gives in to impulses, and therefore is extremely natural. But he always has a reasonable soul.” The writer's characters are truly impulsive and extremely natural. And they do this due to internal moral concepts, perhaps not yet realized by themselves. They have a heightened reaction to the humiliation of man by man. This reaction takes on a variety of forms. Sometimes it leads to the most unexpected results.

Seryoga Bezmenov was burned by the pain of his wife’s betrayal, and he cut off two of his fingers (“Fingerless”). A bespectacled man in a store was insulted by a boorish salesman, and for the first time in his life he got drunk and ended up in a sobering-up station (“And in the morning they woke up...”), etc., etc.

In such situations, Shukshin’s characters may even commit suicide (“Suraz”, “The wife saw off her husband to Paris”). No, they cannot stand insults, humiliation, resentment. They offended Sashka Ermolaev (“Resentment”), the “unbending” aunt-seller was rude. So what? Happens. But Shukshin’s hero will not endure, but will prove, explain, break through the wall of indifference. And...he grabs the hammer. Or he will leave the hospital, as Vanka Teplyashin did, as Shukshin did ("Klyauza"). A very natural reaction of a conscientious and kind person...

No, Shukshin does not idealize his strange, unlucky heroes. Idealization generally contradicts the art of a writer. But in each of them he finds something that is close to him. And now, it is no longer possible to make out who is calling to humanity there - the writer Shukshin or Vanka Teplyashin.

Shukshinsky’s hero, faced with a “narrow-minded gorilla,” can, in despair, grab a hammer himself in order to prove to the wrongdoer that he is right, and Shukshin himself can say: “Here you need to immediately hit him on the head with a stool - the only way to tell the boor that he did something wrong” ( "Borya") This is a purely “Shuksha” collision, when truth, conscience, honor cannot prove that they are who they are. And it’s so easy, so simple for a boor to reproach a conscientious person. And increasingly, the clashes between Shukshin’s heroes become dramatic for them. Shukshin was considered by many to be a comic, “joke” writer, but over the years the one-sidedness of this statement, as well as another - about the “compassionate lack of conflict” of Vasily Makarovich’s works, became more and more clearly revealed. The plot situations of Shukshin's stories are poignant. In the course of their development, comedic situations can be dramatized, and something comic is revealed in dramatic situations. With an enlarged depiction of unusual, exceptional circumstances, the situation suggests their possible explosion, a catastrophe, which, having broken out, breaks the usual course of life of the heroes. Most often, the actions of the heroes are determined by the strongest desire for happiness, for the establishment of justice (“In Autumn”).

Did Shukshin write about the cruel and gloomy property owners Lyubavins, the freedom-loving rebel Stepan Razin, old men and old women, did he talk about the breaking of the entryway, about the inevitable departure of a person and his farewell to all earthly people, did he stage films about Pashka Kogolnikov, Ivan Rastorguev, the Gromov brothers, Yegor Prokudin , he depicted his heroes against the backdrop of specific and generalized images - a river, a road, an endless expanse of arable land, a home, unknown graves. Shukshin understands this central image with comprehensive content, solving the cardinal problem: what is? What is the essence of his existence on Earth?

The study of the Russian national character, which has developed over the centuries, and the changes in it associated with the turbulent changes of the 20th century, constitutes the strong side of Shukshin’s work.

Gravity and attraction to the earth are the strongest feeling of the farmer. A figurative idea of ​​the greatness and power of the earth, the source of life, the guardians of time and the generations gone with it in art, born along with man. The earth is a poetically meaningful image in Shukshin’s art: the native house, the arable land, the steppe, the Motherland, the mother - the damp earth... Folk-figurative associations and perceptions create an integral system of national, historical and philosophical concepts: about the infinity of life and the goals of generations receding into the past, about Motherland, about spiritual ties. A comprehensive image of the earth - the Motherland - becomes the center of gravity of the entire content of Shukshin’s work: the main collisions, artistic concepts, moral and aesthetic ideals and poetics. The enrichment and renewal, even the complication of the original concepts of land and home in Shukshin’s work is quite natural. His worldview, life experience, heightened sense of homeland, artistic insight, born in a new era in the life of the people, determined such a unique prose.

V. Shukshin’s first attempt to understand the fate of the Russian peasantry at historical junctures was the novel “The Lyubavins.” It was about the early 20s of our century. But the main character, the main embodiment, the focus of the Russian national character for Shukshin was Stepan Razin. It is to him, his uprising, that Shukshin’s second and last novel, “I Came to Give You Freedom,” is dedicated. It is difficult to say when Shukshin first became interested in Razin’s personality. But already in the collection “Rural Residents” a conversation about him begins. There was a moment when the writer realized that Stepan Razin, in some facets of his character, was absolutely modern, that he was the concentration of the national characteristics of the Russian people. And Shukshin wanted to convey this precious discovery to the reader. Today's people acutely feel how “the distance between modernity and history has shortened.” Writers, turning to the events of the past, study them from the perspective of people of the 20th century, seek and find those moral and spiritual values ​​that are necessary in our time. Several years pass after finishing work on the novel “The Lyubavins,” and Shukshin tries to explore the processes taking place in the Russian peasantry at a new artistic level.

It was his dream to direct a film about Stepan Razin. He returned to her constantly. If we take into account the nature of Shukshin’s talent, inspired and nourished by living life, and take into account that he himself was going to play the role of Stepan Razin, then one could expect a new deep insight into the Russian national character from the film. One of Shukshin’s best books is called “Characters” - and this name itself emphasizes the writer’s passion for what was formed in certain historical conditions.

In stories written in recent years, there is increasingly a passionate, sincere author's voice addressed directly to the reader. Shukshin spoke about the most important, painful issues, revealing his artistic position. It was as if he felt that his heroes could not say everything, but they definitely had to say it. More and more “sudden”, “fictional” stories from Vasily Makarovich Shukshin himself appear. Such an open movement towards “unheard-of simplicity”, a kind of nakedness, is in the traditions of Russian literature. Here, in fact, it is no longer art, it is going beyond its limits, when the soul screams about its pain. Now stories are entirely the author's word. The interview is a naked revelation. And everywhere questions, questions, questions. The most important things about the meaning of life.

Art should teach goodness. Shukshin saw the most precious wealth in the ability of a pure human heart to do good. “If we are strong and truly smart in anything, it is in doing a good deed,” he said. Vasily Makarovich Shukshin lived with this, believed in it.

The originality of the heroes of village prose by Vasily Shukshin

Village prose occupies one of the main places in Russian literature. The key themes addressed in works of this genre should be called immortal. These include problems of morality and ethics, love for native nature, a kind-hearted view of the human world and other issues that are pressing at all times. The fundamental place among the writers of the second half of the 20th century is occupied by the works of Viktor Petrovich Astafiev ("The Fish Tsar", "The Shepherd and the Shepherdess"), Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin ("Live and Remember", "Farewell to Matera"), Vasily Makarovich Shukshin ("Rural residents”, “Lubavins”, “I came to give you freedom”) and others.

The originality of this writer is explained not only by his talent, but also by the fact that he told the simple truth about his fellow countrymen with love and respect. This is probably why Shukshin’s hero turned out to be not only unfamiliar, but also partly incomprehensible.

Shukshin did not invent his hero, he took him from life. That is why he is spontaneous, sometimes unpredictable: he will either unexpectedly accomplish a feat, or suddenly escape from the camp three months before the end of his term. Shukshin himself admitted: “The most interesting thing for me is to study the character of a person - not a dogmatist, a person not trained in the science of behavior. Such a person is impulsive, gives in to impulses, and, therefore, is extremely natural. But he always has a reasonable soul.” The writer's characters are truly impulsive and natural. They react sharply and sometimes unpredictably to the humiliation of man by man. Seryoga Bezmenov cut off two of his fingers when he found out about his wife’s infidelity (“Fingerless”). A bespectacled man was insulted in a store by a boorish salesman, and for the first time in his life he got drunk and ended up in a sobering-up station (“And in the morning they woke up...”). Shukshin’s heroes can even commit suicide (“Suraz”, “The wife saw off her husband to Paris”) because they cannot withstand insults, humiliation, and resentment. Most often, the actions of Shukshin’s heroes are determined by a strong desire for happiness, for the establishment of justice (“In Autumn”). Vasily Shukshin does not idealize his strange, “eccentric” heroes. But in each of them he finds something that is close to him.

Shukshin's village prose is distinguished by a deep study of the Russian national character, the character of the farmer. He shows that the main thing in him is the attraction to the earth. Shukshin says that for Russian people the land is both a source of life and a connection between generations; and home, and arable land, and steppe. This is the one small homeland with its rivers, roads, endless expanse of arable land...

For Shukshin, the main character who embodied the Russian national character was Stepan Razin. It is to him, his uprising, that Vasily Shukshin’s novel “I came to give you freedom” is dedicated. The writer believed that Stepan Razin was somehow close to modern Russian people, that his character was the embodiment of the national characteristics of our people. And Shukshin wanted to convey this important discovery to the reader.

The peasantry has long occupied the most important role in history in Russia. Not in terms of power, but in spirit - the peasantry was the driving force of Russian history. It was from the dark, ignorant peasants that Stenka Razin, and Emelyan Pugachev, and Ivan Bolotnikov came out; it was because of the peasants, or rather because of serfdom, that the cruel struggle took place, the victims of which were both the tsars and part of the outstanding Russian intelligentsia of the 19th century . Thanks to this, works covering this topic occupy a special place in the literature. Vasily Shukshin managed to create in his prose new image peasant. He is a man with a big soul, he is independent and a little eccentric. These qualities of Shukshin’s heroes captivate us when we read his works. “If we are strong and truly smart in anything, it is in a good deed,” said Vasily Shukshin. The work of the writer himself clearly proves this.

The author tried to convey the experiences that Vitya’s mother experienced. And I think this is one of the most successful attempts. Life's tragedy turns into a story with deep ideological meaning. And the most striking moment, revealing the main idea of ​​the work, was the scene of the mother meeting her son in prison, when she comes to see him. “The mother had something else in her soul at that moment: she suddenly completely ceased to understand what was in the world - the police, the prosecutor, the court, the prison... Her child was sitting nearby, guilty, helpless... And who could take him away from her now, when does he need her, no one else? And really, he needs her. He sacredly honors his mother and will never let her be offended. But even before the meeting he becomes ashamed. Excruciatingly embarrassing. Sorry mother. He knew that she would come to him, break through all the laws - he was waiting for this and was afraid.” He himself was afraid of offending her.

It is simply fantastic to formulate real feelings, deep and bottomless, verbally. However, Shukshin uses language that is understandable to the common man, a language that makes his works accessible to all categories of readers. In addition, the writer takes the side of the main characters, and here the central place in his works is occupied by the love of a mother, which defies any rules and laws, although challenging them is difficult and even unrealistic.
Prizes and awards:
1964 — There Lives a Guy (the film) was awarded first prize at the All-Union Film Festival in Leningrad and the main award at the XVI International Film Festival in Venice — “Golden Lion of St. Mark.”
1969 — State Prize of the RSFSR named after the Vasiliev brothers — For Feature Film"Your son and brother"
1969 — Honored Artist of the RSFSR
1967 — By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Vasily Shukshin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
1971 - USSR State Prize - for his performance in the film by S. A. Gerasimov “By the Lake”
1974 — Kalina Krasnaya (film) — first prize at the All-Union Film Festival
1976 - Lenin Prize - for the totality of creativity (posthumously)

“Village Prose” by Vasily Shukshin. Completed by: 11th grade student Tatyana Selyukova Key dates in the life and work of V. Shukshin.  1929, July 25 - born in the village of Srostki, Altai region. 1946 - went to Kaluga, where he worked as a loader and mechanic. 1949 - drafted into the Baltic Fleet 1954 - entered the Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) 1958 - acted in films for the first time (“Two Fyodors”).  1958 - first publication - “Two on a Cart.”  1964 - shoots the film “There Lives a Guy Like This.”            1965 - the film “Your Son and Brother” was released 1967 - awarded the Order of the Red Labor Banner 1971 - awarded the USSR State Prize 1972 - the film “Stoves and Benches” was released. 1973 - the collection “Characters” was published. 1974 - the film “Kalina Krasnaya” and the book “Conversations under the Full Moon” were released. 1974, October 2 - died suddenly during the filming of the film “They Fought for the Motherland”, on the ship “Danube”. V.M. Shukshin was posthumously awarded the Lenin Prize. "Village Prose". In the 1960s, when the writer’s first works appeared in literary periodicals, critics hastened to classify him as a group of “village” writers. There were reasons for this. Shukshin really preferred to write about the village; his first collection of stories was called “Village Residents”. However, the ethnographic signs of rural life, the appearance of people from the village, landscape sketches did not particularly interest the writer - if all this was discussed in the stories, it was only incidentally, cursorily, in passing. There was almost no poeticization of nature, the author's thoughtful digressions, or admiration of the “harmony” of people's life.   Now it is not known exactly who and when the term “village prose”, which later took root, was introduced, denoting a number of very different works and their authors telling about rural residents. The bitter conclusion of the village prose was summed up by V. Astafiev (we repeat, he also made a significant contribution to it): “We sang the last cry - about fifteen people were mourners for the former village. We sang her praises at the same time. As they say, we cried well, at a decent level, worthy of our history, our village, our peasantry. But it's over. Nowadays there are only pathetic imitations of books that were created twenty thirty years ago. Those naive people who write about an already extinct village imitate. Literature must now break through the asphalt.” Stories. Vasily Shukshin focused on something else: his stories presented a string of life episodes, dramatized scenes, outwardly reminiscent of Chekhov’s early stories with their ease, brevity (“shorter than a sparrow’s nose”), and the element of good-natured laughter. Shukshin’s characters were the inhabitants of the rural periphery, lowly people who had not made it into the “people” - in a word, those who, in appearance and in their position, were quite consistent with those familiar from the literature of the 19th century. "little man" type. Collection "Village People". It is important to note that the collection “Village People” is not only the beginning of a creative journey, but also a big theme - love for the countryside. It is on the pages of this collection that we meet Gleb Kapustin, a fierce debater, Vasily Knyazev, better remembered as the Chudik, and the incredible inventor Bronka Pupkov. How Shukshin understood the story. “What do you think a story is? A man was walking down the street, saw an acquaintance and told, for example, how an old woman had just fallen onto the pavement around the corner, and some big drayman burst into laughter. And then he immediately felt ashamed of his stupid laughter, walked up and picked up the old woman. And he looked around the street to see if anyone had seen him laugh. That's all."   His homeland is the village of Srostki, Altai Territory, his parents are peasants. After leaving school, Shukshin served in the navy, worked as a loader, mechanic, teacher, and school director. Then he graduated from the directing department of VGIK, after which his triumphant path in cinema as a director, actor and screenwriter began. His debut in prose took place in 1961, when his stories were published by the magazine “October,” and two years later (simultaneously with the release of the first director’s film based on his script, “There Lives Such a Guy”), the first collection of stories, “Village Residents,” was published. Subsequently, during the author’s lifetime, the collections “There, Away” (1968), “Countrymen” (1970), and “Characters” (1973) were published.  The heroes of the stories were usually villagers who somehow encountered the city, or, conversely, city dwellers who found themselves in the village. At the same time, a village person is most often naive, simple-minded, and friendly, but the city does not greet him kindly and quickly ends all his good impulses. This situation is most clearly presented in the story “Weird” (1967). According to L. Anninsky, “the main point of Shukshin’s worries is resentment for the village.” This, however, does not mean that Shukshin idealizes the village: he encounters many quite repulsive types of the most peasant origin (for example, in the stories “Eternally Dissatisfied Yakovlev” (1974), “Cut the Cut,” “Strong Man” ( both - 1970) and others).  As literary critic V. Baevsky notes: “Other authors of village prose often depict the city as something openly hostile to the village; for Shukshin, the city is, rather, something different from the village. Not hostile, just different.” Shukshin said about himself that he feels like a person “who has one foot on the shore and the other in the boat.” And he added: “... this situation has its “advantages”... From comparisons, from all sorts of “from here to here” and “from here to there,” thoughts involuntarily come not only about the “village” and the “city” and About Russia".  The Russian man in Shukshin’s stories is often latently dissatisfied with his life, he feels the onset of standardization of everything and everyone, dull and boring philistine averageness, and instinctively tries to express his own individuality with often strange actions. Latest works of V. Shukshin  Shukshin created two novels - the traditional family “Lyubavins” (1965), which tells about a village in the twenties, and the film novel about Stepan Razin “I came to give you freedom” (1971). In addition, he wrote such film stories as “Kalina Krasnaya” (1973), which became Shukshin’s most famous film, “Call me into the bright distance...” (1975), as well as the fantastic fairy tale-parable “Until the Third Roosters” ( 1974), unfinished story-parable “And in the morning they woke up...” (1974), story-fairy tale “Point of View” (1974)...  Shortly before his sudden death, Shukshin received permission to shoot a film about Razin, whose personality he considered extremely important for understanding the Russian character. In the words of the critic V. Sigov, he has “rampant love of freedom, reckless and often aimless activity, the ability to rush and fly, the inability to moderate passions...” - that is, those traits and qualities that Shukshin gave to many of his other characters, in fully representing the contemporary village. Shukshin in the cinema. Shukshin

Village prose occupies one of the leading places in Russian literature. The main themes touched upon in novels of this genre can be called eternal. These are issues of morality, love of nature, kind attitude towards people and other problems that are relevant at any time. The leading place among writers of the second half of the 20th century is occupied by Viktor Petrovich Astafiev (“The Fish Tsar”, “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess”), Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin (“Live and Remember”, “Farewell to Matera”), Vasily Makarovich Shukshin (“Village Residents” ”, “Lubavins”, “I came to give you freedom”) and others.

A special place in this series is occupied by the work of the master of the folk word, the sincere singer of his native land Vasily Shukshin. The writer was born in 1929, in the village of Srostki, Altai Territory. Thanks to his small homeland, Shukshin learned to appreciate the land, human labor on it, learned to understand and feel rural life. From the very beginning of his creative career, Vasily Shukshin finds new ways in depicting a person. His heroes are unusual in their social status, life maturity, and moral experience.

The originality of this writer is explained not only by his talent, but also by the fact that he told the simple truth about his fellow countrymen with love and respect. This is probably why Shukshin’s hero turned out to be not only unfamiliar, but also partly incomprehensible.

Shukshin did not invent his hero, he took him from life. That is why he is spontaneous, sometimes unpredictable: he will either unexpectedly accomplish a feat, or suddenly escape from the camp three months before the end of his term. Shukshin himself admitted: “I am most interested in exploring the character of a non-dogmatic person, a person not trained in the science of behavior. Such a person is impulsive, gives in to impulses, and therefore is extremely natural. But he always has a reasonable soul.” The writer's characters are truly impulsive and natural. They react sharply and sometimes unpredictably to the humiliation of man by man. Seryoga Bezmenov cut off two of his fingers when he learned about his wife’s betrayal (“Besfingly”). A bespectacled man was insulted by a boorish salesman in a store, and for the first time in his life he got drunk and ended up in a sobering-up station (“And in the morning they woke up...”). Shukshin’s heroes can even commit suicide (“Suraz”, “The wife saw off her husband to Paris”) because they cannot withstand insults, humiliation, and resentment. Most often, the actions of Shukshin’s heroes are determined by a strong desire for happiness, for the establishment of justice (“In Autumn”).

Vasily Shukshin does not idealize his strange, “eccentric” heroes. But in each of them he finds something that is close to him.

Shukshin's village prose is distinguished by a deep study of the Russian national character, the character of the farmer. He shows that the main thing in him is the attraction to the earth. Shukshin says that the land for a Russian person is both a source of life and a connection between generations; and home, and arable land, and steppe. This is that same small homeland with its rivers, roads, endless expanse of arable land...

For Shukshin, the main character who embodied the Russian national character was Stepan Razin. It is to him, his uprising, that Vasily Shukshin’s novel “I came to give you freedom” is dedicated. The writer believed that Stepan Razin was somehow close to modern Russian people, that his character was the embodiment of the national characteristics of our people. And Shukshin wanted to convey this important discovery to the reader.

The peasantry has long occupied the most important role in history in Russia. Not in terms of power, but in spirit - the peasantry was the driving force of Russian history. It was from the dark, ignorant peasants that Stenka Razin, and Emelyan Pugachev, and Ivan Bolotnikov came out; it was because of the peasants, or rather because of serfdom, that the cruel struggle took place, the victims of which were both the tsars and part of the outstanding Russian intelligentsia of the 19th century . Thanks to this, works covering this topic occupy a special place in the literature. Vasily Shukshin managed to create a new image of the peasant in his prose. He is a man with a big soul, he is independent and a little eccentric. These qualities of Shukshin’s heroes captivate us when we read his works. “If we are strong and truly smart in anything, it is in a good deed,” said Vasily Shukshin. The work of the writer himself clearly proves this.