At this point I was puzzled. This can’t be a Soviet movie from the 1960s, I thought. It’s a good movie with good acting and good cinematography, not like a lot of American movie crap. But that kid, a sympathetic character, is acting like a kid you might find in an American movie. I’m thinking of the younger brother in A River Runs Through It, for example. That kind of individualism, nonconformity, and resistance to authority is not something that would have been seen in a Soviet movie from those years. Or so I thought.

But from Wikipedia I learn this movie actually was considered subversive in Russia, and almost didn’t get released. It seems there is disagreement about just how it managed to get released, but it’s something that happened about the time that Khruschev was ousted.