Movies - Stirlitz

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	Movies - Stirlitz

Max von Stierlitz (, transcibed Shtirlits) is a hero of a popular Russian book series written by novelist Julian Semyonov and of television series Seventeen Instants of Spring and feature films, produced in the Soviet era.

The lead character SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) Max von Stierlitz is actually a Soviet secret agent (fictional), Colonel Maksim Isaev (1918-67), who has been operating under deep cover in Paris and Shanghai before his infiltration of the SS security service (SD, Sicherheitsdienst).

Like Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, the books were loosely based on actual scenarios. For example, Stirlitz was able to stymie a US plan to collaborate with some supreme SS officials to make after-war Germany an anti-Soviet state. Roosevelt has declared on several occasions that America's goal is Germany's unconditional surrender. However, Dulles has been talking of compromises, even of preserving intact certain Nazi institutions. Years later when Stirlitz returned to Russia he was arrested by forces sympathetic to Beria. Stalin's death saved Stirlitz from the gulag.

Some speculate that the author Semyonov was a KGB agent himself, given the high quality of his insights into the agency and its methods of operating. When Semyonov was first published the Soviet regime 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 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 KGB agent. Born in Russian heartland (a town of Gorokhovets mistakenly placed "at 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.

Trivia

The popularity of Stirlitz gave rise to a series of jokes in both Russia and Germany which continue to this day, see Russian joke: Standartenführer Stirlitz.
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 currently under an active consideration in his "native town" of Gorokhovets, located at Klyazma river.
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.
The Stirlitz series are thought to be inspired by Polish popular series about Hans Kloss from 1967/68

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