Children of the Arbat (TV series)

Children of the Arbat (Russian: Дети Арбата, romanized: Deti Arbata) is a 16-part television series based on the Children of the Arbat trilogy by Anatoly Rybakov. It aired on the Channel One network in Russia in 2004.^[1]

Children of the Arbat
DVD cover
Дети Арбата
Written by	Julia Damsker Valentin Chernykh
Directed by	Andrei Eshpai
Starring	Chulpan Khamatova Yevgeny Tsyganov Irina Leonova Daniil Strakhov Inga Strelkova-Oboldina
Theme music composer	Andrei Ledenyov
Country of origin	Russia
Original language	Russian
No. of episodes	16
Production
Producers	Konstantin Ernst Andrei Kamorin Aleksandr Potemkin
Cinematography	Shandor Berkeshi
Running time	765 min.
Original release
Network	Channel One

The series closely follows the plot of Rybakov's trilogy. Set in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, it tells the story of Sasha Pankratov (Yevgeny Tsyganov), a student and loyal Komsomol member from the Arbat neighborhood of Moscow who is unfairly exiled to Siberia. As his family and friends, including his love interest Varya Ivanova (Chulpan Khamatova), grapple with Sasha's sudden detention and departure, the series shows the growing fear and paranoia that gripped Moscow in the years before the murder of Sergey Kirov and the start of Stalin's Great Purge.