Unlike most Soviet productions, Stierlitz is described as working for Russia rather than the Soviet Union or "the party", suggesting that he is first and foremost a Russian patriot rather than a Communist. Unlike many Soviet productions, most of the ordinary Germans Stierlitz meets are portrayed in a favorable light with the implied message that the ordinary Germans were not responsible for Nazi crimes. Instead, the message of both the book and the TV show was that ordinary Germans were in a certain sense victims of the Nazi leaders who are shown as treating their own people with a callous contempt. Through Semnadtsat' mgnoveniy vesny was a KGB sponsored production, many people who saw the mini-series viewed the Stierlitz character as a metaphor for dissidents in the Soviet Union. The way that Stierlitiz, who despite being in the presence of mostly sympathetic people has to hide at all times who he really is, what he is really doing and what he really believes was seen as an inspiring metaphor for dissidents in the Brezhnev era Soviet Union. Much of the Soviet intelligentsia saw parallels between Siterlitiz, who can never say what he really feels and their own situation in the Soviet Union, which helped to make the character an iconic figure even to those who feared the KGB, and contributed to his appeal even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The American scholar Erik Jens has argued that the "dog whistles" in the mini-series such as scenes where Stierlitz buys luxury goods on the black markets of Berlin such as French cigarettes and cognac, which he greatly enjoys, which Soviet viewers took as an allegory for buying forbidden Western goods on Soviet black markets (a very common practice in the Soviet Union), were intentionally added in to give the series credibility with the Soviet public. The fact that Stierlitz buys goods on the black markets of Berlin that were otherwise unobtainable in a wartime economy helped to make the character more appealing to a Soviet audience in the 1970s who likewise had to frequently resort to the black markets to obtain basic goods that were not readily available in the stores. Seventeen Moments of Spring was unusual amongst Soviet television series in having a hero who enjoys certain Western luxuries as normally in Soviet TV Western luxury goods were associated with decadence and corruption and as a