The key topic of the article is the role and significance of V. Shukshin’s legacy in the history of Russian literature. The author opines that Shukshin’s prose manifests a constant determination to analyze artistic and social reality, which enriches knowledge about man and expands awareness about world culture. The topic is explored in the movie script for The Red Snowball Tree [Kalina krasnaya] and Shukshin’s short stories. Delving into motifs, the reviewer compares Shukshin’s works with those by F. Tyutchev and A. Platonov. Shukshin’s oeuvre is described as democratic, with a distinctive goal to not only depict, but comprehend the vast continent of Russian folk consciousness. Shukshin discovered that ordinary people were not just interesting as human beings (rather than exoticisms for some ethnographic and folklore studies by members of the intelligentsia), but also sacred in the sense that they possess a unique system of moral and aesthetic values. The discovery of village prose had led to idealization of folk culture. It was Shukshin’s pioneering achievement to overcome that trend.