Kalina Krasnaya: Shukshin's Vologda Country

Yegor Prokudin, a career thief, walks out of prison in the first scenes. The colony is real: the Vologda Pyatak, on Fiery Island in Lake Novozero, inside a monastery closed in 1928. Shukshin used the old monastery buildings as the backdrop. The film was his last as director, and 62.5 million people saw it in 1974. Yegor then heads for the village of Yasnoye, to a woman called Lyuba.

Footage of the church at Krokhino made it into the film. The village was flooded in 1961 when the Sheksna reservoir filled, and the church of the Nativity, built between 1788 and 1820, now stands in the water. It is described as the only church on water in Russia to survive the flooding. When Shukshin filmed, in the early 1970s, the building was still whole.

Yegor's arrival and his first talk with Lyuba in a village tea house were shot in Timonino. The tea house was a village canteen converted for the film, and a bus stop was built specially for the shoot. Today the village is largely derelict, so exact spots are hard to find.

Location precision: The tea house building is not recorded as surviving; the pin marks the village.

Most of the scenes set in Yasnoye were filmed in Sadovaya, which was called Merinovo at the time. Half of its ten houses were used. Yegor's mother was played by a local peasant woman, Yefimia (Ovfimia) Bystrova (1892–1976), who had lost three sons in the war. Shukshin told her: tell your own life, and don't look at the camera. In the plot, Yegor travels to Yasnoye to find Lyuba, and in the film this village stands in for it.

Location precision: The film used several houses in the village; the pin marks Sadovaya as a whole.

The film was shot in and around Belozersk, and the town keeps a small memorial to Shukshin and the film, opened in 2014. It stands by the former Baltika cinema on Sovetsky Prospekt, paid for by donations. Shukshin spoke to local viewers there after the premiere. About half the townspeople took part in the shoot, but few made the final cut.

Location precision: The sources name the cinema and the street but no house number; the pin is on Sovetsky Prospekt.

Visitor guidance: The memorial is on Sovetsky Prospekt, in the town centre.

In the finale the killers wait for a ferry on a pier, and Lyuba's brother Pyotr chases them in a truck and rams their car. This was shot at the Sheksna crossing in Desyatovskaya, a village on the river's right bank. Only the river bank is certain; the exact pier is not marked.

Location precision: The sources name the village crossing, not the pier; the pin marks Desyatovskaya.