Shukshin's last film was the only one to garner widespread attention in the West, partially because it was first blocked by censorship then awarded a Lenin Prize. The central role of Egor Prokudin (Shukshin), a professional criminal, is so dark and anti-heroic that it seems even a socialist society cannot redeem the man: quite an ornery vision in a cinema marked by utopian plots. Fresh out of prison, Egor seeks a "holiday for the soul." He is hungry for the excitement of the city, but he is not nourished by what it offers. Egor's only recourse is to travel to a small village where Lyuba (Lydia Fedoseyeva) awaits him. There, in the pure Russian countryside, away from the corrupting force of the city, he will regain his morality and faith. The vast birch forests of the steppes, where he walks among the slender trees calling them his "brides," offer him a poignant but temporary escape, for soon his cohorts in crime come to pay their respects. Shukshin plays his anti-hero with the flinty bitterness of a man who cannot find volia, the old-fashioned Russian word for freedom. It is not to be found in the drunken revelry of the criminal life, nor in the virtuous monotony of official Kolkhoz work. But the film is by no means all gloom. There is a fortuitous store of humor uncovered as the tough city rogue mingles with simple peasants. Richard Peña observes: "One of the very few Soviet films to deal with a 'social deviant'-let alone to deal with one sympathetically-The Red Snowball Tree carries Shukshin's experimentation with loose, unstructured narration to its furthest extent."