Unpublished Testimony About the Story “Slander”: on the Issue of Reception of Vasily Shukshin’s Work

Excerpts from the letters of the writer and sociologist Vladimir Ya. Kantorovich are published concerning his perception of Vasily M. Shukshin’s story “The Slander” (1974). This documentary story became one of the last works of the writer, so the attention of both fellow writers and a wide circle of readers was riveted to it. The story was studied by Kantorovich from the point of view of the sociology of reading. Reader responses to The Slander showed a polarity of opinions: some unequivocally condemned the author of the story, some unconditionally supported him. Letters that did not give assessments, but offered a complex analysis of the phenomenon, were in the minority. And this circumstance showed the division of society, its polarity and irreconcilability. This premonition of civil troubles, the eve of dramatic events, is the lofty theme of the story “The Slander”. It is all the more valuable that V. Kantorovich grasped the significance and significance of this text, focusing his sociological optics on it.