A wildly prolific director, actor, and writer, Vasilii Shukshin (1929-74) reached more Soviets in more media than perhaps any other artist in the post-Stalinist USSR. This first English-language study of Shukshin and his work is thus a portrait of the culture of Soviet Russia after Stalin. John Givens begins with Shukshin's position between cultural realms and social strata: his abandoned peasant heritage in Siberia as the son of a purged kulak on...