of Lenin's mausoleum at the time, Alexander Schefov, was a conservative hardliner who criticized the production and delayed it. The KGB also showed little cooperation; for example, the film crew, consisting of 25 members and their equipment, had to wait more than seven hours before clearing security to enter the Kremlin. The Kremlin's power supply could not be used for lighting because the KGB felt that this would disrupt the technology of their own equipment, and it took four to five hours to figure out how not to overload the Kremlin's power supply. There was a power outage at Stalin's dacha just after the final death scene was filmed. Sometimes, a whole day of shooting was lost because extras weren't there. Stalin's victory speech in the Kremlin hall originally involved a meal. The shooting schedule was set at eight in the morning, but the extras were missing because they were still ten kilometers away at the make-up area. After more than eight hours, shuttle buses brought the 500 extras in. But as they were hungry, the extras ignored the director's instructions and ate the whole buffet before the shooting started. Ormond, who was mistakened for a prostitute at the hotel, said they were "starting to think that this couldn't be coincidences and was a deliberate attempt" to sabotage the film. Duvall, who lived the whole time in Savoy Hotel, had to spend more than four hours a day being "transformed" into Stalin by two make-up specialists. However, the procedure was reduced to around 75 minutes during the course of filming. Overall, the film was shot in nine six-day weeks. On December 21, 1991, four hours after the Soviet Union had dissolved with the signing of the Alma-Ata Protocol, the final scene was shot at Stalin's dacha. To test the effect of their masks, Schell and Duvall went out among the people in their respective personas as Lenin and Stalin. Schell was often ignored while Duvall experienced rejection and contempt. Reception Russian premiere Owing to the attempted coup, Boris Yeltsin asked the filmmakers to have the film shown on November 7, 1992 in the cinema of the DOM Cultural Center in Moscow before it was broadcast on US television on November 21, 1992. The date was deliberately chosen as it was the 75th anniversary of the October Revolution. Even before the premiere, isolated scenes were shown on Russian television. Nikolai Pavlov,