Aleksandr Yakovlevich Askoldov was a Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 Russian actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 and film director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

. He graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute. After finishing the advanced directing course he directed his first film, Commissar

Commissar (film)

Commissar is a 1967 Soviet movie based on one of Vasily Grossman's first short stories, "In the Town of Berdichev" . The main characters were played by two People's Artists of the USSR, Rolan Bykov and Nonna Mordyukova...

(1967). The film was banned for more than 20 years and put an end to his career as a director in the USSR.

Commissar

Commissar was shot in the political climate of post-Khrushchev Thaw

Khrushchev Thaw

The Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and...

. From the outset of the production, Goskino

Goskino

Goskino USSR is the abbreviated name for the USSR State Committee for Cinematography in the Soviet Union...

 censor

Censorship

thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

s forced Askoldov to make major changes:
1967 was the year of the 50th anniversary of 1917 October Revolution

October Revolution

The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...

 and the events were to be presented in the Communist Party

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...

-mandated style of heroic realism

Heroic realism

Heroic realism is a term which has sometimes been used to describe art used as propaganda. Examples include the Socialist realism style associated with Communist regimes, and the very similar art style associated with Fascism...

.

After making the movie, Askoldov lost his job, was expelled from the Communist Party, charged with social parasitism

Parasitism (social offense)

Social parasitism is a charge that is leveled against a group or class in society which is considered to be detrimental to the whole by analogy with biologic parasitism .-General concept:...

, exiled from Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 and banned from working on feature film

Feature film

In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...

s for life. He was told that the single copy of the film had been destroyed. Mordyukova and Bykov, major Soviet movie stars, had to plead with the authorities to spare him of even bigger charges. The film was shelved by the KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

 for twenty years.

In 1986, due to glasnost

Glasnost

Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...

 policies, the "Conflict Commission" of the Soviet Film-makers Union recommended the re-release of the movie but Goskino refused to act. After a plea from Askoldov at the Moscow Film Festival, when the dissolution of the Soviet Union

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the disintegration of the federal political structures and central government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , resulting in the independence of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991...

 was imminent, the film was reconstructed and finally released in 1988.

The film won the Silver Bear - Special Jury Prize

Jury Grand Prix

The Jury Grand Prix is a Silver Bear award given by the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival to one of the feature films in competition...

 at the 38th Berlin International Film Festival

38th Berlin International Film Festival

The 38th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from February 12 to 23, 1988.-Jury:* Guglielmo Biraghi * Ellen Burstyn* Heiner Carow* Eberhard Junkersdorf* Tom Luddy* Heinz Rathsack* Daniel Schmid* Andrei Smirnov...

 in 1988, and four professional Nika Award

Nika Award

The Nika Award is a prestigious annual ceremony held by the Russian Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences which was established in 1987 in Moscow, Russia by Yuli Gusman, and ostensibly modelled on the Academy Awards . Russian Academy Award takes its name from Nike, the goddess of victory...

s (1988).

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