Stirlitz

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Otto von Stirlitz (Russian: Шти́рлиц, transcribed Shtirlits) is a hero of a popular Russian book series written by novelist Julian Semyonov and of television series Seventeen Moments of Spring and feature films, produced in the Soviet era.

The lead character SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) Max Otto von Stirlitz (possibly Stierlitz), while being an officer of Amt 6 (6th Department, foreign counterintelligence) of Nazist Germany Security Service (RSHA) and direct subordinate of Walter Schellenberg, is actually a Soviet secret agent (fictional), Colonel Maksim Maksimovich Isaev, 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 based on actual scenarios (though often exaggerating Western Allied-Nazi cooperation for the aftermath while undermining similar parcticies by the Soviets (This is not to say that the former did not happen, but it was often exaggerated far beyond reality in the show)). 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. In the movie, Dulles has been talking of compromises, even of preserving intact certain Nazi institutions under differing names, though insisting in unconditional surrender of Nazi government. This particular scenario, and others similar to it, since it was made in the Cold War, was more propaganda than anything else, as though the Western Allies did allow some high-ranking Nazi members into the West, it should be noted that the Soviets did much the same thing to a greater extent, and the Allies were adament in destroying organizations fanatical to the Nazis.

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 "on 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.

[edit] Trivia

• The popularity of Stirlitz gave rise to a series of jokes in Russia, Bulgaria, Poland (and the whole Eastern block) 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