MOSCOW, July 25, Pavel Surkov. Today marks the 95th anniversary of Vasily Shukshin's birth. His fate is the story of a man of the people, full of incredible inner strength, going towards his goal, a little naive and always filled with goodness. It seems that he and his heroes are still close to us, because they are the deepest self of Russia, the backbone and foundation of its DNA. So if there is anywhere to look for the solution to the «mysterious Russian soul», then definitely in the books and films of Vasily Makarovich.
Born in the distant village of Srostki, he quickly mastered peasant work. He worked as a teacher and then as a director of a local school. But I dreamed of making films. So that her son Vasya could go to Moscow and enter VGIK, his mother even sold a cow. Shukshin lived up to expectations: he joined the metropolitan world of young filmmakers and new cultural leaders. He became a regular at the famous company on Bolshoi Karetny Lane, where Andrei Tarkovsky, Arthur Makarov, and their younger comrade Vladimir Vysotsky were. Everyone was captivated by his sincerity and fantastic talent.
At night, in an ordinary student notebook, he wrote his amazing stories, simple sketches from the life of peasants. Shukshin quickly began to be published, and directors noticed his texture. In Gerasimov's «Quiet Don» he played a wordless episode: a naive boy peeks out from behind a fence. But I remember it: an interesting vignette, a very young Shukshin.
He made his directorial debut, the film “There Lives Such a Guy,” based on his own script, and invited his VGIK comrade Leonid Kuravlev to play the main role. Vasily Makarovich always wrote the central characters “to suit himself” — with absolute peasant confidence.
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With his best friend Georgy Burkov, who was also loved by directors for his simple but noticeable texture, Shukshin talked for hours about literature. Both were bookworms and subconsciously suffered due to the fact that behind the simple “peasant” appearance, those around them often did not assume a sharp and tenacious mind, depth of soul and a penchant for philosophizing.
Each new film by Vasily Makarovich became an event, they were snapped up for quotes: “Stoves and Benches”, “Kalina Krasnaya”. Shukshinskoye «Shvarknuli to your liking!» was perceived as a kind of quintessence of the Russian spirit. His movie characters are simple, kind, sometimes confused in life, but always bright. This was Shukshin’s principle — first of all, to see goodness and inner light in a person. Conveying this is not an easy task for a writer.
He dreamed of making a movie about Stenka Razin and playing the daring Cossack chieftain himself. I tried several times to start with the picture. But nothing came of it, but the script turned into a full-fledged novel — “I came to give you freedom.”
As Vasily Makarovich grew older, he increasingly realized that his main calling was literature, and his main tools were that same school notebook and a simple fountain pen. He wrote in a train compartment, in a hotel room, and sometimes on a stump in the forest during breaks between filming.
He worked himself to the point of exhaustion: he launched his own films, acted. The leading role in Sergei Bondarchuk's film «They Fought for the Motherland» turned out to be his last. Vasily Shukshin died of a heart attack during filming on location. Burkov found him dead in the morning — the night before, as usual, they had talked for a long time, dreamed and shared plans.
All of Moscow saw Shukshin off — the funeral procession moved to the cemetery, and people stood on the sidewalks with branches of viburnum, on which the berries were turning red. Vladimir Vysotsky wrote a song about this with a bright ending: «And next to it grew a viburnum bush — such a red viburnum.»
If Vasily Makarovich knew today that his works are still published and even included in the school curriculum, he most likely would not be surprised. With his light peasant grin he would wink and rejoice: look, they understood, they appreciated, and I had no doubts, by the way.