The Great Citizen

The Great Citizen (Великий гражданин) is a 1938 Soviet biopic film directed by Fridrikh Ermler.

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.

Cast

 * Nikolay Bogolyubov - Shakhov - the great citizen
 * Ivan Bersenev - Kartashov - the conspirator
 * Oleg Zhakov - Borovsky - the accomplice
 * Zoya Fyodorova - Nadya
 * Boris Poslavsky - Sizov
 * Aleksandr Zrazhevsky - Dubok
 * Boris Chirkov - Maksim, the investigator
 * Pyotr Kirillov - Briantsev - the assassin
 * Yefim Altus - Katz - Shakhov's helper
 * Yelena Yegorova
 * Yevgeni Pankov
 * Yevgeni Nemchenko - Dronov
 * Georgi Semyonov - Kolesnikov
 * V. Kiselyov - Gladkikh
 * A. Polibin - Solovyev
 * Sergei Kurilov
 * N. Raiskaya-Dore - Shakhov's mother
 * Natalya Rashevskaya - Olga
 * K. Ryabinkin - Kryuchkov