In Vasily Shukshin's stories of the late 1960s–1970s, one of the main themes is the devastation of the country’s cultural life. Abandoned churches, fallen crosses and weeds appear in his prose as a symbol of the timelessness, as an identifying feature of the epoch of stagnation. Shukshin's transition to desolation and wilderness does not happen by itself; he has his own characters who embody this phenomenon. In the collection of stories “Characters” (1973) the writer presents several such personalities who destroy the cultural layer: from the brigadier Shurygin, who felled a church of the 17th century for the sake of fun, to the guardians of culture in the story “The Master”, convincingly proving that architectural monuments are not worth preserving. The article is devoted to analysing these characters in the structure of Shukshin's collection.
Russian literature of the second half of the twentieth century; Vasily Shukshin; prose of the 1970s; Vasily Shukshin's collection “Character”; cultural space; preservation of cultural monuments in the Soviet era.