Tseka komissar Mirostsenko (1925)

The Soviet Russia of 1920s. A group of Estonians, including young woman Agnes and her mother, Agnes’s friend engineer Karl Raudsepp and his fiancee Erna, are waiting for permission to return to Estonia. Love, however, won’t ask about people’s plans, poor conditions nor general atmosphere of violence. The mutual feelings between Karl and Agnes make Erna so jealous that she will make a false complaint about Agnes to Cheka. Agnes’s beauty hypnotizes both Tchekist Commissar Miroschtschenko and secret agent Hevelyn – both of them make up their minds that they must win the girl’s heart. Post-revolutionary Russia was depicted on screen: the queues for heating wood; food being served in a cafeteria with a poster on the wall saying “He who does not work, neither shall he eat”; and the Cheka, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage – the precursor to the KGB – that operated from 1917 to 1922… The background for the entire drama of passion was provided by the repatriation that was topical at the time. Or vice versa – an attempt was made to bring the serious topic of repatriation closer to the viewers by using melodrama…