The Great Citizen

The Great Citizen
(Великий гражданин)
Directed byFridrikh Ermler
Written byMikhail Bleiman
Manuel Bolshintsov
Fridrikh Ermler
StarringNikolay Bogolyubov
Edited byYe. Makhankova
Music byDmitri Shostakovich
Production
company
Release dates
  • 13 February 1938 (1938-02-13)
  • 27 November 1939 (1939-11-27)
Running time
252 minutes
CountrySoviet Union
LanguageRussian

The Great Citizen (Russian: Великий гражданин, romanized: Velikiy grazhdanin) is a 1938 Soviet biopic film directed by Fridrikh Ermler.[1]

A fictionalized biography of Sergei Kirov (the character's name is Shakhov), the film was intended as ideological support for the Great Purges; it depicts life in USSR during the 1920s and 1930s.

Stalin made direct interventions in Mikhail Bleiman and Manuel Bolshintsov's screenplay. During the making of The Great Citizen four people associated with it were arrested. In the press Ermler and his screenwriters were obliged to condemn the "wrecker" leadership of Lenfilm, most importantly Piotrovski.[2]

  1. ^ Peter Rollberg (2009). Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema. US: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 267–268. ISBN 978-0-8108-6072-8.
  2. ^ Birgit Beumers. A Companion to Russian Cinema. Wiley. ISBN 1118424700.