[5] One such novel was No Password Required (1966) by Yulian Semyonov, set in the Russian Civil War, which marked the first appearance of the heroic Cheka agent Maxim Maximovich Isaуev.
The director Tatyana Lioznova was subsequently ordered to add in new scenes showing the Red Army advancing and taking Berlin, which added another year to its production, causing the mini-series to debut in 1973 instead of 1972 as planned.
[6] The mini-series Seventeen Moments of Spring was another enormous hit in 1973, attracting an average of 30-40 million viewers per night and turning the Isayev character into a cultural phenomena in the Soviet Union.
[6] In Seventeen Moments of Spring, Stierlitz is the cover name for a Soviet super-spy Colonel Maxim Maximovich Isaуev (Макси́м Макси́мович Иса́ев), whose real name is Vsevolod Vladimirovich Vladimirov (Все́волод Влади́мирович Владимиров).
[9] Stierlitz is assigned a role in the SS Reich Main Security Office in Berlin during World War II, infiltrating Ausland-SD (foreign intelligence) headed by Walter Schellenberg.
[11] Stierlitz is quite the opposite of the action-oriented James Bond; most of the time he gains his knowledge without any Bond-style stunts and gadgets, while in the film adaptation of the stories the action is presented through a narrative voice-over by Yefim Kopelyan.
[13] Stierlitiz engages in a lengthy "battle of the wits" with the Nazi leaders, especially his nemesis the Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller who knows that there is a Soviet spy in Berlin and gradually closes in on Stierlitz.
[6] Much of the dramatic tension in both the book and the mini-series comes from the way that Müller, who is portrayed here as a relentless Javert-like figure moves irrevocably towards the conclusion that Stierlitz is the mole, who in turn knows he can only delay the inevitable, but chooses to stay on as long as possible to sabotage the German war effort as much as he can.
[14] Using the real life Operation Sunrise as its inspiration, both the novel and mini-series depicted Allen Dulles, the chief of the American OSS operations for Central Europe engaging in peace talks in Switzerland with Karl Wolff, the Higher SS Police Chief of Italy, which was historically correct; however the picture of the United States seeking an alliance with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union was not.
[6] Unlike Bond, Stierlitz is devoted to his wife who he deeply loves and despite spending at least ten years as a spy in Germany and having countless chances to sleep with attractive German women remains faithful towards her.
[14] Through Semnadtsat' mgnoveniy vesny was a KGB sponsored production, many people who saw the mini-series viewed the Stierlitz character as a metaphor for dissidents in the Soviet Union.
[17] Jens wrote: "No fictional Russian spy, either approved by the Kremlin or accepted by Soviet citizenry, could take such a cartoonish view of life and death as do James Bond and his countless Western imitations".
And however intricately and realistically John le Carré rendered him or how compellingly Gary Oldman or the late Alec Guinness played him on-screen, Smiley remains a creature of the shadowy intelligence world, known mainly to the fans of the genre and having little to say to the wider culture".
[2] Stierlitz movies contributed a number of catchphrases, such as "Character: nordic, robust" (Характер — нордический, выдержанный, a personal characteristic, usually mocking or ironic).
[19] In the movie Seventeen Moments of Spring Stierlitz has the longest scene of complete silence in the history of Russian sound cinema when Stirlitz silently meets with his wife for five and a half minutes.