ORYOL, Russia — In 1947, Josef Stalin summoned film director Sergei Eisenstein to the Kremlin to discuss his movie, “Ivan the Terrible.”
While Stalin had enjoyed the first installment of the masterpiece, released three years earlier, he intensely disliked the sequel, then in production, which depicted the czar’s descent into paranoia and bloodthirsty madness.
According to a transcript of the meeting, Eisenstein was mostly silent as Stalin delivered a history lecture. In a comment that would later become infamous, the Soviet leader told Eisenstein that Ivan the Terrible was, in fact, “a great and wise ruler.” Stalin’s henchmen, Vyacheslav Molotov and Andrei …read more
Source: European Voice
