The Chernomyrdin saga

The premiere of the documentary film, The Extraordinary Cher­nomyrdin, was screened at the Molodist International Film Festival, which was attended by the film’s main character, Russia’s Ambassador to Ukraine Viktor Chernomyrdin.

This film may be considered the sequel to the film Russian Roots, or Once upon a Time in Orenburg, which was shown three years ago in Kyiv and made by the same team: director and script-writer Elena Fetisova and her co-writer, the Russian diplomat Yevgeny Beloglazov.

“This is not the first time that Fetisova and I are working together,” Beloglazov told The Day. “At the Molodist Film Festival in 2005 we showed our film Russian Roots... which was made by the Ukrainian film studio Interfilm. It recounts the story of four heroes — the famous Mexican artist Volodymyr Ky­balchych (Vlady), the legendary French writer Maurice Druon, the brilliant cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, and the well-known Russian politician Viktor Chernomyrdin.

“What links them all is Orenburg. The 2005 premiere in Kyiv was attended by the celebrated author Maurice Druon, who belonged to the resistance during World War II, and today is a member of the Academie Francaise and the Legion of Honor, and the winner of the Prix Goncourt. The film was a success.

“Incidentally, many spectators were astonished to see the author of the popular action-packed historical novels from the Rois Maudits series and the trilogy Les Grandes Familles. Few people know that he is Cher­nomyrdin’s fellow countryman. Druon’s father Lazare Kessel was born in Orenburg, and his grandmother came from the well-known merchant family, the Lesks, who owned a string of large stores in 19th-century Orenburg.

“In his teenage years Maurice adopted the surname of his stepfather Druon, and it was under this name that he became part of French, and later world, literature. Incidentally, audiences saw the legendary French writer again on the screen in a new picture called The Extraordinary Chernomyrdin. In this film he is reading fragments from his monograph about Chernomyrdin.

“Druon wrote a preface to a book, in which gives quite a detailed account of Cher­no­myr­din, their acquaintance, encounters, and impressions from his visits to Orenburg. We used fragments from these memoirs in the film, which was made to mark Chernomyrdin’s 70th birthday. It is a portrait of the politician and diplomat from his childhood to the present day. We focused on Chernomyrdin’s career as minister, head of government, and current ambassador of Russia to Ukraine.”

A book was also published to coincide with the jubilee.

“Yes, but this is a totally different genre. The book We Wanted to Do Our Best is a collection of interviews that Cher­nomyrdin gave to the Moscow journalist Aleksandr Gamov in various years. It recounts the various stages of Chernomyrdin’s long life: childhood, education, army service, working as a manager of an Orenburg plant, then Moscow: the ministry, Gazprom, the Cabinet of Ministers, the Yugoslav page of his biography (the Russian president’s special representative in the Balkans), and, of course, the Kyiv period.”

It is difficult to make a film about a person that is alive and well. We are often chary with our praise when a person is alive, but when that individual dies, we begin lavishing praise.

“Yes, it is difficult to talk about a living personality, but on the other hand, there are people who worked with Chernomyrdin. They remember certain events very well, for example, when he worked at Gazprom, the Cabinet of Ministers, or on diplomatic missions. This is a plus. But as time ticks on, something is forgotten, eyewitnesses die, and this takes the sting out of events that become part of history. The book and the film are based on real events, and they are illustrated with interviews that we conducted with various individuals.”

Will the Chernomyrdin cinematic saga be continued? The movie says very little about his Ukrainian period, although Chernomyrdin can be called a “grand ambassador.” He has been in our country for seven years, building diplomatic bridges between Russia and Uk­rai­ne. But it would be wrong to say that there is fine weather in the relations between our two states: there are warm and sunny days as well as frosty spells.

“The Ukrainian milestones are a considerable part of Cher­no­myrdin’s life. We have some plans. Time will tell!”