{"id":48468,"date":"2016-11-24T17:05:25","date_gmt":"2016-11-24T15:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=48468"},"modified":"2016-11-24T14:06:05","modified_gmt":"2016-11-24T12:06:05","slug":"27-05-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=48468","title":{"rendered":"Russian war film set to open amid controversy over accuracy of events"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Russian war film set to open amid controversy over accuracy of events<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Shaun Walker<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Panfilov\u2019s 28 tells the story of a Russian division who fought to the death to defend Moscow, but some are questioning the story\u2019s validity<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A still from Panfilov\u2019s 28, which tells the story of a defence of Moscow under attack from the Nazis. Photograph<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Every Soviet schoolchild was taught about the heroic feats of the last 28 members of Ivan Panfilov\u2019s division, which in late 1941 fought to the death to stop a Nazi tank assault on Moscow in one of the best known episodes of the Soviet war effort.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRussia is vast, but there is nowhere to retreat \u2013 Moscow is behind us,\u201d one of the Red Army soldiers, armed at the end with just Molotov cocktails and grenades, said as the attack was halted.<\/span><\/p>\n

But as a film about the events, Panfilov\u2019s 28, opens in Russia this week, controversy rumbles on over the fact that many of the details of that last stand \u2013 both in the film and versions pre-dating it \u2013 appear to have been invented.<\/span><\/p>\n

Arguments over the upcoming film and the mythology around the episode in general began last spring, when Sergei Mironenko, the director of Russia\u2019s state archive, gave an interview stating that while there had indeed been a bloody battle outside Moscow, it was not as many had understood it.<\/span><\/p>\n

His words provoked such outrage that over the summer the archive posted online a 1948 internal Soviet military report into the events, which came to the conclusion that a journalist from the Red Army\u2019s newspaper had made up the particulars of the story, inventing quotes and ignoring the fact that some of the soldiers had survived and one was believed to have surrendered to the Germans.<\/span><\/p>\n

The legend was cooked up to fit in with the Soviet demand that soldiers should fight to the death rather than surrender.<\/span><\/p>\n

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