17 Moments Spring Download
Subject essay: James von Geldern Television viewers were glued to their sets through the prime viewing months of 1973, watching Iulian Semenov’s Seventeen Moments in Spring. The tale of Soviet spy Maksim Maksimovich Isaev, who had infiltrated the highest ranks of the Hitler’s political intelligence agency (SD) as Standartenfuhrer von Stirlitz, the series tracked his efforts to avert a conspiracy of German and American intelligence chiefs to forge a separate peace in the waning months of the war. Serial Key Instagram Downloader For Android. Semenov, an experienced writer of police procedurals and spy novels who was rumored to have high connections himself in the intelligence community, was retailing old Cold War myths of American treachery in Seventeen Moments. Yet he also managed to portray Nazi leaders with a sympathy unknown to Soviet viewers, and to use Nazi Germany to offer a sly critique of Soviet society.
Music for the movie 17 moments of spring. 17 MOMENTS OF SPRING. Gorky Film Studios, USSR, TV Mini-Series, 12 x 70m episodes, 1973. Original title: Semnadtsat mgnoveniy vesny. Vyacheslav Tikonov, Oleg Tabakov, Rotoslav Plyatt, Yekterina Gradova. Narrated by Yefim Kopelyan. Screenplay by Yulian Semyenov, based on his own novel.
Memories of the Great Patriotic War were still powerful and deep for Soviet citizens. Whereas most western societies that had fought the war had put the experience behind them by 1973, and the war had become distant history for most young people, the war remained for Soviet citizens of all generations a source of trauma and pride. It was the one undeniable accomplishment of their country united, the one that had somehow remained unsullied by the pomposities of propaganda, the last time that the entire country had functioned in unity and honor, and the last great achievement of the Soviet state. The war effort provide the Communist Party with its last and most vital moment of legitimacy. Because it had reshaped the country so profoundly, and because few Soviet citizens had not lost a relative in the war, the memory of the war was veiled by a reverence that made critical examination of the legacy very difficult.
Lessons and stories of the war taught to children in Soviet schools depicted their own side in unnuanced shades of good and glory (as happened in other societies that had fought the war). Humor in treatment of the war bordered on blasphemy, so much so that the writer Vladimir Voinovich was excluded from the Writers’ Union in 1974 for having written The Life and Amazing Adventures of the Soldier Ivan Chonkin, the beloved tale of a not-too-bright Russian soldier as he survives the brutal war. The modesty and good humor of the piece contrasted sharply with the bravado of Leonid Brezhnev’s own wartime memoirs, Little Earth.
Image copyright Alamy While generations of Westerners were growing up on the films of James Bond, Soviet citizens had their own favourite spy, a wartime agent who went under the name of Max Otto von Stierlitz. And it could easily have been Stierlitz who prompted Vladimir Putin to join the KGB, writes Dina Newman.
The USSR's answer to James Bond was a very different kind of spy. He had no time for women or gadgets. His life was devoted entirely to his work in Berlin in World War Two, where, under cover, he infiltrated the German high command. Stierlitz was the hero of a 12-part series, Seventeen Moments of Spring, screened on Soviet TV every year around 9 May - the date the USSR marked as the end of World War Two. The first broadcast, in 1973, was watched by an estimated 50 to 80 million people. 'Every evening the streets were deserted and people rushed home from work to watch the latest episode and to find out what would happen next,' says Eleonora Shashkova, one of the stars of the series.
In 1999 the Kommersant newspaper commissioned a poll asking which film character Russians would like as their next president - Stierlitz came second Apart from being a gripping drama, it has a perfect Cold War plotline, with Stierlitz disrupting secret peace negotiations between the Nazis and the Americans in 1945. But the film also had another hidden purpose. 'The film showed the importance of secret agents, who are highly respected people in our country.
It instilled patriotism in the post-war generation,' says Shashkova. In fact, it was commissioned by Yuri Andropov - then head of the KGB, later the country's leader - as part of a PR campaign designed to attract young, educated recruits. Andropov personally approved the series before it went on air, shooting was overseen by his first deputy, and two KGB operatives employed as consultants appeared in the credits under aliases. Vladimir Putin has never said whether or not it was Stierlitz who inspired him to become a spy. But he was 21 when the film was first screened, and he joined the KGB two years later.
In fact, Kim Philby, the British spy who defected to the USSR in 1963, commented that a spy who looked so thoughtful would not last long in his job. In 1991, when Putin had already left the KGB and was working for the mayor of St Petersburg, he admitted for the first time to his career as a spy in a TV documentary, which includes a re-enacted scene from Seventeen Moments of Spring. Instead of Stierlitz driving his car back to Berlin, Putin is seen at the wheel of a Russian Volga car, with the film's theme tune playing in the background.
Image copyright Getty Images In the documentary, the future Russian president warns there is a risk that 'for a period of time, our country will turn to totalitarianism'. He goes on: 'But the danger lies not in the law enforcement organs, nor in the state security services nor in the police - and not even in the army.
The danger lies in our own mentality. We all think - and even I think it sometimes - that if we bring order with an iron fist, life will be easier, more comfortable and safer. But in reality, we won't be comfortable for long: the iron fist will soon strangle us all.' Some years later, in the chaos of the late 1990s, many Russians did indeed begin to yearn for law and order, and some for the iron fist. Opinion polls indicated that voters were keen for the next president to be young, ethnically Russian, a former member of the security services and a non-drinker. Image copyright Alamy Image caption The actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov as Stierlitz, in Seventeen Moments of Spring 'Having lost faith in liberals, the country was searching for its Stierlitz,' writes Arkady Ostrovsky, Russia and Eastern Europe editor for the Economist, in his book, The Invention of Russia.
In 1999, he notes, the Kommersant newspaper commissioned a poll asking which film character Russians would like as their next president. Stierlitz came second, after the wartime military commander Marshal Zhukov. The cover of the newspaper's weekly supplement carried a picture of Stierlitz with the caption, 'President-2000'. And in March 2000, after a period as acting president, Putin was duly elected to the post. Eleonora Shashkova plays Stierlitz's wife in Seventeen Moments of Spring, but interestingly, the two characters never meet - except in one famous scene, where she is taken from Russia to Berlin, and visits a cafe with another man.
Stierlitz is already sitting at another table in the cafe, and from time to time they manage to exchange furtive glances, full of longing. The viewer sees his eyes, then hers, then his eyes again. Ater a few minutes she gets up and slowly walks out. On her 70th birthday, in December 2007 - more than seven years into the Putin era - Shashkova received a special present, unprecedented in the history of Soviet cinema.
It was a thank you gift from the Russian secret service, for her portrayal of the wife of a foreign agent. Join the conversation - find us on,, and. Trittico Botticelliano Program Notes For Band.