Ego prevoskhoditel'stvo/His Excellency 0000-1429

Released in the U.S. as Seeds of Freedom, this film is one of several during the period that dealt with the dilemma of Soviet Jews. It was inspired by the real-life tragedy of Hirsh Lekert, a Jewish shoemaker executed in 1902 for attempting to kill the czars governor-general of the city of Vilna (today's Vilnius, capital of Lithuania) for his harsh treatment of the Jewish minority. In this adaptation, the governor of an unnamed city is killed, and the Jewish leaders fear that the entire Jewish community will be blamed and persecuted for the action. The conservative rabbi, played by distinguished stage actor Leonid M. Leonidov (he also played the assassinated governor), plans to send a delegation to the new governor pleading for mercy- even as his own daughter abandons her orthodox Jewish background to join the Communist rebels. The propagandistic idea behind the film and similar others was to suggest to the Soviet regime that young Jews were always on the side of the Reds even if their elders were reluctant to accept Soviet thinking. Jews nevertheless remained second-class citizens in the Soviet Union. Bulanov was poster designer who was active in Leningrad in the 1920s and early 1930s. His split design underscores the films central Jewish-Soviet conflict and Leonids performance as the two opposing characters.

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