The article contains a review which lays out the main concepts of reports and speeches by leading experts in the history of Russian literature of the second half of the twentieth century from Russia, Belarus, Bulgaria, and Germany. The reports and speeches under revision were made at the round table discussion dedicated to the 90th anniversary of V. M. Shukshin, held on November 15, 2019 within the framework of the St. Petersburg international cultural forum (section “Education”). The key issue for discussion is included in the title of the round table “Is Vasily Shukshin a modern classic?” The author argues that the scholars spoke mainly about the issues of literary anthropology, and most actively used a variety of analytical methods developed in line with the mythopoetic approach to the literary text. Especially significant were the attempts to find a modern language to characterize the universally gifted person and the modern literary situation.