Stirlitz
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Max Otto von Stirlitz (Russian: Шти́рлиц) is a character of a popular Russian book series written by novelist Julian Semyonov and of the television series Seventeen Moments of Spring (starring Vyacheslav Tikhonov[1] ) and feature films, produced in the Soviet era.
The lead character SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) Max Otto von Stirlitz (possibly Stierlitz[2]), while being an officer of Amt 6 (6th Department, foreign counterintelligence) of Nazi Germany Security Service (RSHA) and direct subordinate of Walter Schellenberg, is actually a Soviet secret agent (fictional), Colonel Maksim Maksimovich Isaev (whose "actual name" was Vsevolod Vladimirov), who has been operating under deep cover in Paris and Shanghai before his infiltration of the SS security service (SD, Sicherheitsdienst).
The Stirlitz series are thought to be inspired by Polish popular series about Captain Kloss from 1967/68.[citation needed]
Like Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, the books were loosely based on actual war history. They also incorporated propaganda themes such as a view to the US plan to ally with leading elements of Nazi regime in an anti-Soviet bloc. Even thou based on real negotiations between Allen Dulles and Nazis leading to the unconditional capitulation of German troops in Italy, documents collected by Julian Semyonov were never available to public.
In the movie, Dulles talks of preserving Nazi institutions under different names, though insisting on the unconditional surrender of the Nazi regime. In real life, the Americans did take over Reinhard Gehlen's Eastern European spy network after the war, and both Western and Soviet governments sheltered high-ranking Nazis who had useful intelligence or scientific information (see Operation Paperclip).
Some speculate that the author Semyonov was a KGB agent himself (NKVD was a pre-war precursor of KGB), given the high quality of his insights into the agency and its methods of operating. When Semyonov was first published in 1968, the Soviet government was attempting to restore the tarnished reputation of the KGB which had suffered as it implemented the worst of Stalin's excesses. The popularity of Stirlitz (an NKVD agent) is regarded to have helped the KGB's image within Russia to some extent and certainly glamorized its overseas service.
Stirlitz was regarded as the ideal NKVD agent. Born in the Russian heartland (the town of Gorokhovets,[3] mistakenly placed "on the Volga river" in the feature), he was a renaissance man who knew how to complete missions but was also familiar with high culture. He spoke all European languages except Irish and Albanian. He favored the intellectual approach over violence and is believed to have killed only one time in his fifty-year career as an agent. Like James Bond, he had a favorite drink, cognac. He drove a Horch car and was not as taken by women as Bond, declining the offer of some supposedly attractive prostitutes with the rejoinder "I'd rather drink some coffee." During his constant travels, Stirlitz missed Russia and longed to return.
The popularity of Stirlitz gave rise to a series of jokes in Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary (and the whole Eastern block) and Germany which continue to this day, see Russian joke: Standartenführer Stirlitz.
A Russian TV series Isaev is due in 2009, based on the books of Julian Semyonov.
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[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Before Tikhonov, the role was offered to Georgiy Zhzhonov, because (as the director put it) Stirlitz's face should have been handsome and repulsive at the same time.[citation needed]
- ^ Actually, there is no such German name, the closest being Stieglitz.
- ^ The construction of the monument to Stirlitz, in the form of Tikhonov's look-alike, is under an active consideration in his "native town" of Gorokhovets, located at the Klyazma river.[citation needed]
