Nikolai Shchors was one of the few indisputable Bolshevik icons of Ukrainian origin; Dovzhenko's film on him began as a specific personal commission from Stalin - to direct "a Ukrainian Chapayev," after the wild success in 1934 of the Vasilyev's comic biopic, which portrayed a wily, folksy Red Army commander (the hit that still endures). Uncomfortable with the assignment, yet clearly under pressure, Dovzhenko threw himself into his research on the project, only to discover that many of Shchors's comrades from the old days had by that point been purged. Clearly made under the sign of "socialist realism," Dovzhenko portrays the film as a model of clear-headed political vision, although obviously much more of a sophisticate than the homespun Chapayev; he quotes Shevchenko to his troops and even keeps a portrait of Pushkin at his HQ.
Source : www.seagullfilms.com
