In Soviet film, over the years the theme of kolchoz took on an almost sacred quality: symbol of economic success, it became a common, unifying everyday scenario. Barnet had dealt with the theme in 1931 in Ledolom [The Thaw], based on a work by Gorbunov, a proletarian literature exponent, and dedicated to the collectivization of the countryside. Today considered one of the director’s most interesting and complex films, Ledolom was removed from the screens because viewed as a hazy melodrama in which roles were not distinct from one another while the protagonist’s private tragedy was clearly defined. Twenty years later Barnet returned to kolchoz with the comedy Ščedroe leto. Abroad the film was enthusiastically received by Jacques Rivette in Cahiers du cinéma, who defined it as a work “of a true and profound innocence”. But it did not satisfy Barnet, who on various occasions regretted not having portrayed the more realistic qualities of the events narrated: “the absence of conflict”, an indispensable theoretical element in dramaturgy at the time, led to the creation of artificial contradictions. Despite it all, with the understated lyricism connecting the characters, the film demonstrates an attempt to filter and soften the conformist stylistic dictates of the time.