> James Bond books or films.

I've just read an interview with a Russian book editor that mentioned Lev Ovalov [1], which is I think the closest thing to what you wanted (in terms of books, anyway):

> Soviet writer, author of detective stories about the Chekist-counterintelligence officer Major Pronin .

(...)

> It was for this magazine that the story "Blue Swords" was written - the first in a cycle about Major Pronin, after which six stories about the hero were published in 1939-1940 in the magazines " Vokrug Sveta " and "Znamya" , then came out as a separate publication in the series " Library of the Red Army ", and in 1941 were included in the collection" The Adventures of Major Pronin ".

(...)

> On July 5, 1941, Lev Ovalov was arrested on charges of divulging classified information and convicted, after which he spent 15 years in labor camps and exile. There, the writer worked in his main specialty - a doctor, and met the nurse Valentina Klyukina, with whom they began to live together in the late 1940s .

[1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%BE...

Thanks! I’ll check it out.

Try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeen_Moments_of_Spring

Can't recommend highly enough, this is a defining movie.

Nowhere close to the Bond-style films though.

Just a fair warning to the uninitiated.

For one thing, 17 moments was based on historical events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sunrise_(World_War_I...

Thanks, I wasn't really asking for the actual bond but speaking Russian; I was asking "how did the Soviets address the same kinds of issue in popular culture" (if they did at all -- a parallel commenter suggests that it wasn't really a topic safe for anyone to touch).

It doesn't seem to have been a big genre, probably because of the difficulty of talking about secret agents in a country where secrecy was brutally enforced and the KGB were deeply feared.

I can however reccomend the Italian bond knockoff genre, including the ridiculous OK Connery: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062078/?ref_=nm_knf_t1

Starring Neil Connery. Music by Ennio Morricone.

OK, now I have to see that!

And from tonight's bad film club, may I recommend this Czech time travel / twin swap screwball comedy with Nazis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVBPNfKfgNo

Soviet spy movies are like James Bond written by Checkhov :) For example, there's "The fate of the secret agent" (1970) [1] and while it depicts a spy, it's very much not a James Bond type of guy. E.g. he only gets a single woman in the movie and he actually loves her.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314736/

Thanks, I'll give that a try! The very differences are the point; if it were nothing but a reshoot of an existing trope that wouldn't be so interesting. So your "like James Bond written by Checkhov" is the kind of approach that would be interesting.

I believe you’ll like it: “Passion of Spies” (Шпионские страсти) 1967

Great, thanks!

Not a spy movie but Eastern (as a Soviet Western) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Home_Among_Strangers

Also sounds quite interesting! The very familiarity of the tropes is what makes the different kinds of interpretations more illuminating.