This article analyses a key text from the ‘village prose’ movement in late Soviet literature, both the novella and film of Vasilii Shukshin’s Kalina krasnaia (1973–1974). The article begins with a survey of the main writers of ‘village prose’ in Soviet literature of the 1950s to 1970s, and then locates the work of the writer, actor and director Vasilii Shukshin within this corpus. With reference to both the published novella and the film, and by examining in particular the depiction of the main character, Egor Prokudin, the author attempts to show how the motif of masculinity runs through the text and becomes the dominant theme in Shukshin’s social and cultural worlds. This motif, furthermore,reveals the deeper level of spiritual significance the work has, and its unique place in the history of Soviet literature.