From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973) ("Семнадцать мгновений весны" in Russian), also Seventeen Instants of Spring is a Soviet TV miniseries. It was filmed at Gorky Film Studio, directed by Tatiana Lioznova and based on the series of books by the novelist Yulian Semyonov. It is divided into 12 episodes, with each part being 70 minutes and the whole series being 840 minutes long.

The series is about the life of Soviet spy Maksim Isaev operating in Nazi Germany under the name Max Otto von Stirlitz, played by the Soviet actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov. Other leading roles were played by Leonid Bronevoy, Oleg Tabakov, Yuri Vizbor, Evgeni Evstigneev, Rostislav Plyatt, Vasily Lanovoy, and Mikhail Zharkovsky.

The plot is driven by Stirlitz's (ultimately successful) attempts at thwarting negotiations between SS General Karl Wolff, representing Walter Schellenberg and Heinrich Himmler, and American intelligence operative Allen Dulles in Bern, Switzerland during the final months of the Second World War. The Dulles portrayed in the show, acting without the authorization of the President, is interested in reaching a peace agreement with Nazi Germany that would leave many Nazi institutions in place in order to prevent the rise of "Bolshevism" in Germany and Northern Italy. The negotiations are conducted in secret and behind the back of Hitler and, more importantly for Stirlitz, the USSR. The tension isn't easy since right from the very beginning of the series, Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner opens up an investigation on Stirlitz, led in part by Stirlitz's role in delaying the German atomic research program and his otherwise almost-too-impeccable record of loyalty and devotion to Hitler, even as other German officers had begun to grumble in private about the leadership. There is one scene in the third episode where Stirlitz attends a funeral and sees Kaltenbrunner there, not knowing that Kaltenbrunner is the very man who opened the investigation against him. A man next to Stirlitz fearfully utters Kaltenbrunner's name to him, portraying a powerful climactic moment.

Mikhail Zharkovsky as Ernst Kaltenbrunner

Near the end of the 12-part miniseries, Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Martin Bormann both get together and send the Gestapo to arrest Karl Wolff for his negotiations with the Allies. However, Wolff is saved in the nick of time when Schellenberg intervenes. Upon the arrival of Wolff's plane, Schellenberg stops the Gestapo forces from capturing Wolff and allows for the negotiations to take place.

The negotiations between Dulles and Wolff did take place in reality on March 8, 1945, codenamed both Operation Sunrise and Operation Crossword ("Sunrise Crossword" in the film) and Soviet agents supplied information on them to the USSR. One of them was Kim Philby.^[1][2]. Another agent of the Soviet Military Intelligence, dubbed as "a fantastic source, who received the first-class information from Germany" by Allen Dulles, was Rudolph Rassler, working in Switzerland during secret negotiations ^[3].

Inventing the image of Isaev-Stirlitz, Yulian Semyonov worked with the biographies of well-known Soviet intelligence officers: Lev Manevich, Nikolai Kuznetsov, Sandor Radó. But no one of them became a prototype of the film's main character. Stirlitz is the collective image, in which the author embodied all the best features of the intelligence officer.^[4]

Vyacheslav Tikhonov as Stirlitz

Stirlitz is sometimes referred to as a Russian James Bond, even if the comparison is not entirely warranted. Although the show contains some relatively unbelievable elements (i.e. a Russian passing for a German for twenty years) and it may even have served a somewhat similar ideological role as the James Bond films did in the West, Seventeen Moments of Spring is based, even if only loosely, on actual historical events. Moreover, the show also strives for a much more realistic version of foreign espionage than the James Bond films do, with Stirlitz carefully playing on rivalries within the SD and SS, cautiously seeking out friendly contacts, prudently developing alibis for his covert activities and very rarely resorting to force or gadgetry. It also notable that one hardly gets the impression that many of the Nazis were all the incarnation of evil: while there the show does remind the viewer of the horror of Nazi death camp through use of some original footage, one nonetheless finds it hard not to take something of a liking for Mueller and some of Stirlitz' other adversaries.

The music for the movie was written by Armenian-born composer Mikael Tariverdiev.

The series was immensely popular in the Soviet Union and it originated many popular phrases as well as an entire genre of anecdotes, the latter having seemingly taken a life of its own. The show is still frequently aired on Russian television. Plans were discussed to build a monument to Stirlitz in the city of Gorokhovets, his birth place in the series.

A Polish television series with a very similar theme, More Than Life at Stake (Polish: Stawka większa niż życie) (with Captain Kloss being the analogous character to Stirlitz) was made in 1967-1968.

• Stirlitz listens to a song by Édith Piaf, Non, je ne regrette rien, which was released in 1960
• Most SD, Gestapo and RSHA staff is portrayed routinely wearing trademark black SS uniform, which had fallen out of use since 1939

1. ^ Analysis of the Name File of Guido Zimmer. Records of the Central Intelligence Agency - Records of the Directorate of Operations. Retrieved on September 10, 2006.
2. ^ Superagent nicknamed "Little Son" (Russian). SVR. Retrieved on September 10, 2006.
3. ^ "They Are Honest and Modest People..." (Russian). SVR. Retrieved on September 10, 2006.
4. ^ Yulian Semyonov's "Moments" (Russian). Voice of Russia. Retrieved on September 11, 2006.

• Semnadtsat mgnoveniy vesny at the Internet Movie Database