Zinoviev Emil Wolk as Lev Kamenev Roshan Seth as Lavrentiy Beria Mátyás Usztics as Nikolai Yezhov John Bowe as Kliment Voroshilov Jim Carter as Sergo Ordzhonikidze Murray Ewan as Nikita Khrushchev Stella Gonet as Zinaida Pavlutskaya Ordzhonikidze Elena Seropova as Nino Beria Colin Jeavons as Genrikh Yagoda Miriam Margolyes as Nadezhda Krupskaya Kevin McNally as Sergei Kirov Clive Merrison as Vyacheslav Molotov Lisa Orgolini as Anya Larina Ravil Isyanov as Yakov Dzhugashvili Joanna Roth as Svetlana Alliluyeva Aleksandr Feklistov as Leonid Nikolaev Stanislav Strelkov as Vasily Stalin Vsevolod Larionov as doctor Lukomsky Oleg Tabakov as doctor Vinogradov (credited as Oleg Tobakov) Background Inspiration The idea of a film about Stalin occurred during an American Broadcasting Company (ABC) broadcast of the TV film Disaster at Silo 7 produced by Mark Carliner, which was seen by a member of an official Russian delegation during their stay in the United States. Enthusiastic about the anti-nuclear topic, she invited Carliner to Russia for several seminars and demonstrations. When Carliner visited the country, the film was broadcast on Russian television and well received. This later enabled Carliner to obtain filming permits for original locations. Carliner had studied Russian history at Princeton University, and credits his Russian heritage for his motivation to film the movie. He presented the project to ABC and was rejected on the grounds that it was "too expensive and too risky". Only the chairman of the cable channel Home Box Office (HBO) Michael J. Fuchs, who had considered making a film about Stalin, agreed to take on the project. It took two more years of research with the assistance of Soviet officials specialising in Stalin's era to access to archives and historical recordings, to write the script. In July 1991, the project was presented as "the first honest, very personal reckoning with the controversial, dictatorial godfather of the Soviet Union". Carliner emphasized that it would not only be a historical biography, but also a gangster film. According to various sources, a production budget of between 9.5 million and 10 million US dollars was allocated for the film. Casting and director According to Carliner, Al Pacino was among several actors who expressed an interest in the lead, which eventually went to Robert Duvall. Duvall had turned down the offer to play Stalin in Andrei Konchalovsky's feature film The Inner Circle three months earlier, which is said to have been due to different salary