The story of a hero battling against corruption and greed echoes the cattle baron or railroad Westerns. Themes and influence The film combines traits of a "buddy film" with "Eastern" look and setting. Nancy Condee writes that the choice of film location likens the Russian Civil War to U.S. frontier history: "the clean slate, a terra nullius at the imperial periphery, an unlimited moral expanse where socialism could be inscribed". The Chekists, shown at the beginning of the movie merely as former brothers in arms and friends, by the end of the film become a well-oiled organism supporting state sovereignty and governability. Likewise, the landowner's carriage, destroyed at the beginning of the film, gives way to a sleek and modern limousine as a symbol of the new state. The Chekists are presented as the main instrument of the new state, its Mind, Honor and Conscience. The ordinary people, for whose sake the gold is confiscated, are never shown in contact with each other or the central characters. The only distinct folk figure is Kaium, a half-wit of unspecified Asian ethnicity. To Nancy Condee, Kaium plays the same part to Shilov as a friendly Indian to a U.S. marshal in a traditional Western movie. Shilov brings him "into the imperial fold as the state's first colonial subject". The finale "brings home the spirit of the Revolution, which forges friendship that lasts forever". On the other hand, Lemke, a captured White officer, "has no friend, nobody to rely on; he is lonely, and this is almost enough punishment". Ultimately, in the final scene, "the image of the old order represented by the carriage that featured in the black and white flashbacks becomes coloured: the past has caught up with the present, and the new order has won". As Birgit Beumers notices, Mikhalkov does not attempt to portray an accurate version of events, but creates a myth of a heroic Revolution. Mikhalkov presents history "as it should have been". Not rooted in historical facts, the film blurs the historical perspective. Birgit Beumers mentions Svetlana Boym's distinction between two types of nostalgia, "one dwelling on longing for, the other on rebuilding, the past". Boym, addressing whether a past that has slipped out of reach can be reclaimed by means of nostalgia, warns against nostalgia that engages in "anti-modern mythmaking of history". Cast Yuri Bogatyryov — Egor Shilov Anatoly Solonitsyn — Sarychev Alexander Kaidanovsky —