Stolypin (Season 1)

Stolypin (Столыпин, 2024) is a Russian historical drama you can watch online on iFILM. It opens in the summer of 1906, as Pyotr Stolypin steps off the train in St. Petersburg, freshly handed the interior ministry and, soon after, the whole government. The empire is convulsing with terror attacks and peasant revolts, and the job of steadying it lands on one man.

A second thread runs alongside. A cell of maximalist revolutionaries is plotting to kill the figure they call the chief enemy of the revolution — the only real obstacle being how to get near someone guarded this closely. The series sets two convictions against each other: young radicals genuinely willing to die to ease the lot of workers and peasants, and a prime minister who drives himself into the ground, certain that reform and a firm hand matter more than sympathy for the men throwing bombs. The subtitle — "A story of love. A story of Russia" — isn't decoration: Stolypin's private life is braided into the politics on purpose.

Alexander Ustyugov takes the title role, with Alexander Yatsenko, Stasya Miloslavskaya and Pavel Popov, directed by Alexei Andrianov. The show refuses to carve its hero into either a saint or a villain, catching a reformer at the point where every decision he signs is paid for in someone's blood. Rated 16+. Stream Stolypin (2024) online on iFILM.