Василий Шукшин: Жизнь и творчество писателя из Алтая

Russian writer

Vasily Makarovich Shukshin (Василий Макарович Шукшин; 25 July 1929 – 2 October 1974) was a Soviet Russian writer, actor, screenwriter and film director from the Altai region who specialized in rural themes. A prominent member of the Village Prose movement, he began writing short stories in his early teenage years and later transition to acting by his late 20s.

Vasiliy Makarovich Shukshin was born on 25 July 1929 to a peasant family of assimilated Moksha Mordvin origin in the village of Srostki near Biysk in Siberian Krai, Soviet Union (now in Altai Krai, Russia). In 1933, his father, Makar Leontievich Shukshin, was arrested and executed on the charges of participating in an "anti kolkhoz plot" during the Soviet collectivization. He was only rehabilitated 23 years later, in 1956. His mother, Maria Sergeyevna (née Popova), had to look after the survival of the entire family. By 1943 Shukshin had finished seven years of village school and entered an automobile technical school in Biysk. In 1945, after two and a half years at the school, but before finishing, he quit to work in a kolkhoz. In 1946 Shukshin left his native village and worked as a metal craftsman at several enterprises in the trust Soyuzprommekhanizatsiya: at the turbine plant in Kaluga, at the tractor plant in Vladimir, etc. In 1949, Shukshin was drafted into the Navy. He first served as a sailor in the Baltic Fleet, then a radio operator on the Black Sea. In 1953 he was demobilized due to a stomach ulcer and returned to his native village. Having passed an external exam for high school graduation, he became a teacher of Russian, and later a school principal in Srostki. In 1954 Shukshin entered the directors' department of the VGIK, studied under Mikhail Romm and Sergei Gerasimov, and graduated in 1960. While studying at VGIK in 1958, Shukshin had his first leading role in Marlen Khutsiyev's film Two Fedors and appeared in the graduation film by Andrei Tarkovsky.

I Want to Live, Progress Publishers, 1978. Snowball Berry Red and Other Stories, Ardis Publishers, 1979. Short Stories, Raduga Publishers, 1990. Roubles in Words, Kopeks in Figures, Marion Boyars, 1994. Stories from a Siberian Village, Northern Illinois University Press, 1996.

Latvian theatre director Alvis Hermanis adapted eight of Shuksin's short stories for stage, in a collaboration with the Theatre of Nations in Moscow, entitled Shuksin's Stories or Shuksin's Tales. as of 2021 it is still touring the world, having first being staged in around 2009, and has won several awards. Starring Evgeny Mironov, the play was staged at The Barbican in London in October 2019.