As for the correspondent in Paris, he had been filmed in melting snow, chilled to the bone, trying to make himself heard above the noise of the street: "I'm standing just ten minutes' walk away from the square in Paris that bears the name of Stalingrad. But do the Parisians grasp the significance of this name, so foreign to French ears?" And he begins to question passersby, who prove incapable of giving an answer.

When they showed this scene for the first time at the studio one of the bosses asked the director: "So why couldn't he go to the square itself? What's all that about just ten minutes' walk away from'? It's like doing a report on Red Square from Gorky Park!"

"I already asked him that…" The director tried to excuse himself. "According to him, there's not a Frenchman to be found in the square. Nothing but blacks and Arabs. Yes, that's what he said. I give you my word. He said, 'They'll all think it was shot in Africa and not in Paris at all.' That's why he moved closer to the center to find some whites."

"Unbelievable!" bayed an official in the darkened auditorium. And the showing continued. The camera focused on a huddled clochard and a row of gleaming shop windows. And then once more there appeared yellowing shots of documentary footage from the period: the gray steppe, tanks bobbing up and down, as if at sea, soldiers captured, still alive, on camera.

And Demidov appeared once more, no longer inhis grease-stained jacket but in a suit, wearing all his decorations. He was in a classroom, seated behind a desk that was decked out with a little vase containing three red carnations. In front of him schoolchildren were religiously drinking in his words.