Prodigal Son: Vasilii Shuksin in Soviet Russian Culture

Introduction

Introduction WHEN ASKED WHY a writer should aspire to be an actor and director as well, Vasilii Shukshin responded in a way that captures the power and allure of the cinema for any artist. “Tell me,” he said, what author would refuse to appear with his program in front of an audience of millions? What author would refuse to enter into the closest contact with the public who—right there, not stirring from their places—give him proof of their approval, comprehension, sympathy (or perplexity and incomprehension ) . . . What artist could resist the temptation to stand before such a judge in order to know who he really is?1 Close contact with an audience of millions and the instant gratification and validation this gives are what make the movies such an attractive vehicle for writers wishing to promote their own artistic programs in the broadest possible way and with the most immediate—if sometimes transitory—results. Shukshin understood this well, carving out his three careers with all of the gusto of an overachiever, as if to embrace every possibility for contact with the public on a host of issues. And by 1974, shortly before his death, he had succeeded beyond his wildest expectations when over sixty million Soviet moviegoers flocked to see his last film, Kalina krasnaia. A clear example of the kind of upward mobility enshrined in the mythology of the “classless” Soviet society, Shukshin was a backwoods Siberian whose unlikely acceptance into film school and subsequent success in film and fiction became the basis of a legend told both during and after his lifetime . His tripartite creative identity, however, was as conflicted as it was celebrated . As an actor and a director, Shukshin had one foot in the world of popular cinema, while as a writer, he had the other in the more serious and (in Russia) more prestigious world of literature.2 As much a split as it was a synthesis, Shukshin’s multifaceted persona won for the artist a broader audience, even as it kept him from achieving greater success in any one of his chosen careers. At his best, Shukshin the short-story writer has been ranked alongside Anton Chekhov, Raymond Carver, John Cheever,3 and Erskine Caldwell,4 while his films have been credited with revitalizing auteur 1 cinema in the Soviet Union.5 Yet Shukshin died neither a major writer nor a major filmmaker. Rather, he died as something less and yet more than either of those things—he died a cultural sensation: an artist of seemingly endless talents and great personal appeal, a jack-of-all-trades who represented one of the more memorable “rags-to-riches” stories in the history of Soviet culture, even a kind of folk hero beloved by millions. He was, as Edward J. Brown asserts, “that rare phenomenon, an original and powerful writer with a broad popular following and the complete support of the regime.”6 Shukshin’s striking combination of talents, interests, and outlooks struck a rare chord in Soviet readers and movie viewers of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with the actor and guitar poet Vladimir Vysotskii, Shukshin was the closest thing Soviet Russian culture had at that time to a popular artist for the working class, and this was one reason for his great appeal.7 His themes, like those of Vysotskii, were closely linked to the lives of average citizens—the working masses and the so-called technical intelligentsia— and were conveyed in a simple, salty, and expressive vernacular. Readers and moviegoers felt that they could trust him, that he was telling their story and telling it the way it was. In the years following his death, Shukshin’s name became synonymous with honest, truth-telling prose. Even in postSoviet rereadings, he is seen as a symbol of conscience in a compromised, corrupt age.8 Since his death, some critics have come to view Shukshin as one third of a troika of artists who represented the best fiction to be published in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev period. Iurii Trifonov and Valentin Rasputin—writers of so-called Urban and Village Prose, respectively—are the other two artists.9 Together all three writers conveniently represent the main developments of Soviet literature after Stalin, with Shukshin occupying a prominent middle ground not only thematically (his works chronicle the transition from country to city life) but artistically as well (Shukshin’s stories did not make the demands—in terms of complexity, length, and style...