A Socialist 007 : East European Spy Dramas in the Early James Bond Era

Abstract

If the James Bond films were officially unavailable to East European audiences until 1989, the Eastern Bloc did not escape the global reach of the Bond phenomenon. East European spy dramas began to appear during the late 1960s, and they were mostly made for television and not all that distant in spirit from the Bond films. This chapter examines three television series: More Than Life at Stake (1967-1968) from Poland, The Invisible Gun Sight (1973-1979) from the German Democratic Republic, and Seventeen Moments of Spring (1972) from the Soviet Union. While these tales of espionage evince the projections of the west in the east during the Cold War, they reveal foremost the powerful appeal of consumerism behind the Iron Curtain.