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I have incurred many debts over the years in my work on Shukshin, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge them here. My greatest debt of gratitude is also my most recent, to my colleague Kathleen Parthé of the University of Rochester, whose commentary on successive drafts of this book has been thorough, thoughtful, and astute. From her uncanny ability to discover just the article or citation I needed to our numerous discussions about Shukshin and Soviet culture over the last several years, I have benefited greatly by her close contact and collegial guidance. Galya Diment, mentor through the greater part of my two graduate degrees and my dissertation advisor, deserves a special thank you as well for her ever-generous counsel through the years and her patient and insightful readings of different drafts of this book. Anna Maslennikova of the University of St. Petersburg provided critical readings of several of the chapters that helped shape my arguments as well as much-needed personal encouragement. Daniel Rancour-Laferriere and Davor Kapetanič were helpful commentators on my work on Shukshin at various stages of my graduate years, and I thank them, too. I reserve a special debt of gratitude for Deming Brown, whose seminar on contemporary Soviet prose at the University of Washington was not only an important early influence but led to an academic and personal relationship that continued through the writing of my dissertation and my first steps as an assistant professor. This book, for all of its inadequacies, is offered in part to honor his memory as well as to recognize his special role in my academic formation and his distinguished contribution to the Slavic field. Research for this book was supported in part by a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Information Agency, and the U.S. Department of State, which administers the Russian , Eurasian, and East European Research Program (Title VIII) as well as by a Fulbright-Hays dissertation fellowship. I would like to thank my advisor in Barnaul, Professor Svetlana Mikhailovna Kozlova of the Altai State Acknowledgments xv University, for her personal and academic counsel, and Igor Korotkov and Tamara Varaksina of the Altai Regional Museum of the History of Literature , Art, and Culture for their invaluable assistance. In Moscow, Mark Volotskii of Gorky Film Studio gave me free access to the archives of the Studio Museum and spent many hours with me discussing Shukshin and Soviet cinema. Ketia Klevitskaia kindly coordinated my research efforts at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). My thanks also to Robert Mann for sharing with me his transcription of Kalina krasnaia and for putting me in contact with Shukshin’s widow, Lidiia Fedoseeva-Shukshina. In addition, I profited greatly from participation in the Summer Research Laboratory on Russia and Eastern Europe during the summers of 1994 and 1996 at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. I would also like to acknowledge a junior faculty leave supported by the University of Rochester in the spring of 1997, which gave me the crucial period of uninterrupted time necessary to complete the manuscript. This book has taken shape over the years ever mindful of the works of other researchers and critics of Shukshin’s prose, most of whom are listed in the bibliography. Three “muses” in particular were influential and inspirational . Svetlana Kozlova, in various articles and her book Poetika rasskazov V. M. Shukshina (The Poetics of Shukshin’s Stories), opened my eyes to the deep structure of Shukshin’s works and the subtle turns of his psychology . Diane Nemec Ignashev was one of the first Western critics to devote serious attention to Shukshin, and her dissertation “Song and Confession in the Short Prose of Vasilij Makarovič Šukšin: 1929–1974,” which she generously shared with me when I began my own work, remains the most thoughtprovoking and comprehensive discussion of the writer’s short stories to date. Finally, Lev Anninskii, the author of numerous articles and the important commentaries accompanying Shukshin’s collected works, has made the task of everyone who studies Shukshin easier and more rewarding. Further thanks go to Hugh McLean, Caryl Emerson, and an anonymous reader for Northwestern University Press, who evaluated the manuscript with keen but kind critical eyes and lent their support to the project. In that most delicate task of assessing a scholarly work in its still vulnerable penultimate version, all three commentators were thorough, objective...

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