ABSTRACT
The ‘story’ of Russian serials, as Birgit Beumers maps out in the preceding chapter, runs for many episodes. I am particularly interested here in an instance dealing with the putative origins of state counter-intelligence. As far as this topic is concerned, everything, it would seem, springs from Tat’iana Lioznova’s overcoat; her spy drama Seventeen Moments of Spring (Semnadtsat’ mgnovenii vesny, 1973) is the reference point for many of the intelligence and counter-intelligence serials that followed. Some of the more recent post-Soviet examples would include such spy serials as Vitalii Aksenov’s Agent of National Security (Agent natsional’noi bezopasnosti, 1998-2001), Aleksandr Aravin’s The Red Choir (Krasnaia kapella, 2004), Andrei Maliukov’s The Saboteur (Diversant, 2004) and Aleksei Muradov’s Man of War (Chelovek voiny, 2005).2
