Life and Fate (Season 1)

Life and Fate (2012) is a landmark Russian miniseries you can watch online on iFILM — Sergei Ursuliak's adaptation of Vasily Grossman's novel, with Sergei Makovetsky, Anna Mikhalkova, and Alexander Baluev. Its premiere on Rossiya-1 drew one of the largest TV audiences in Russia that year.

The story runs across the urban fighting for Stalingrad in 1942 and 1943. Physicist Viktor Shtrum — Jewish, gifted, principled — is working on nuclear calculations at a research institute the Soviet state now considers strategically critical. His relatives are dying while he runs his equations: some in German camps, some in NKVD prisons. Denouncements start arriving about Shtrum himself. The one thing that can protect him is a scientific project Stalin has taken personal interest in. Using that protection means signing a document Shtrum believes to be a lie.

Grossman's manuscript was lifted from the editorial office by KGB agents in 1961; the novel didn't reach readers until the 1980s. Ursuliak filmed the story without softening the politics: Stalingrad is backdrop here, not subject. The central question is what a totalitarian system does to a person who insists on remaining himself. If you've read War and Peace — this is roughly that scope, set in the Soviet twentieth century. Watch Life and Fate online on iFILM.