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Premiere of One of the Best Movies about War

On April 14, 1975, on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the Great Victory, a public viewing of the wide-screen color film “They Fought for their Country” took place in the Vyoshenskaya village.

The film is dedicated to the unbending moral power of Russian soldiers, the heroic feat of the people in the Great Patriotic War.

The film is based on the novel with the same title, the author of which was one of the first spectators.  Together with Mikhail Sholokhov the auditorium of the new regional House of Culture was visited by village citizens: farmers, labors, white collars, veterans of the Great Patriotic War - participants in past battles captured in the film. The director of the film Serghey Bondarchuk, actors Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Ivan Lapikov, Director of Photography Vadim Yusov, General Director of Mosfilm Studio Nikolay Sizov, reperesentatives of art and literature came to meet with Sholokhov.

On the eve of the premiere Serghey Bondarchuk gave an interview to the newspaper “Izvestia”. He said: “Sholokhov deeply grasped the origins of our victory, showing the power of the spirit of the Soviet Army, the Soviet man. All of us who worked on the film adaptation of his work were united by one desire: to reveal the truth of the unparalleled heroism of our people, to be sincere, so that nothing would leave the novel or come from outside, to preserve its integrity. It is for the viewers to judge whether we have succeeded".

Everyone watched the film with excitement. They were not ashamed of the tears while empathizing with the tragic fate of Zvyagintsev, Streltsov, Lopakhin, soldiers of the hot July of 1942. They responded with laughter to comic situations, if the heroes, by the will of circumstances, were in such situations. And, when the beam of the film projector went out, heated applause did not cease in the hall for a long time. The spectators accepted a new work that embodied the writer's word on the screen.

After watching Mikhail Sholokhov thanked the authors of the film and  leading actors for the work that helps perpetuate the feat of arms of Soviet soldiers in a deadly battle with fascism.

Larisa Bukina