Ivanovy Vary

Overview

The pamphlet film parodies the biography of an obsessed scientist - here Tsar John the Terrible acts as the first nuclear scientist in the fatherland. Having received from his grandmother Sophia Palaiologos the mysterious "Greek fire" and a library full of alchemical texts, the tsar eventually established the production of heavy water in his Dubna patrimony near Moscow. Evaporating heavy water in huge stills, Grozny nullified the surrounding forests, but extracted a hundred quarters of this rare and valuable substance. The Tsar's reserves were accidentally discovered only in the middle of the twentieth century and, according to eyewitnesses, were very useful for the needs of the Soviet atomic project.