Seventeen Moments in Spring Video

Tatyana Lioznova: Nazis Watching Propaganda (1973)
Description: In this scene SS Reichsfurer Himmler and his aide Walter Schellenberg discuss what will be the source of the intrigue in the successful television series, a conspiracy of Himmler and other leading Nazis to strike a separate peace with the Americans, lead by future CIA chief Allen Dulles. However, the scene also reminded Russians of a time when they were close allies of the Americans, and resurrected on screen the long denied figure of Joseph Stalin.

Tatyana Lioznova: Stirlitz and the Pastor (1973)
Description: This scene between Shtirlitz, the Soviet agent who has infiltrated the highest reaches of Nazi command, and a pacifist pastor he seeks to recruit, used Nazi oppression as an uncomfortable mirror for Soviet life.

Mikhail Romm: Ordinary Fascism (1965)
Description: The technique of using Fascism for a covert critique of the Soviet system was pioneered by Mikhail Romm in his Ordinary Fascism (1965). Using newsreel footage captured with the fall of Berlin, and photographs taken from SS soldiers, Romm drew a vast panorama of life under totalitarian Nazism. He narrated the film himself in a conversation tone, telling his viewers “We selected what seemed most striking from the tremendous amount of material, to give us all the opportunity to think a bit.” Just one of the ways that he drew attention of the analogy of Nazism to Soviet communism was by using the term, unusual in Russian, of Nazism instead of Fascism, underscoring the socialism in national socialism.

Outside Prokhorovka (1983)
Description: On a field outside the village of Prokhorovka. Commemorating the anniversary of the Battle of Kursk. Villagers near the battle site remember the dead on July 12, St. Peter’s Day according to local traditions.

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