Ever since childhood, I’ve loved watching detective stories on TV. Later that hobby spilled over into books too (I wore my Sherlock Holmes volumes out back in that same childhood). And among detective stories, I always singled out films and series about the Soviet police fighting the criminal underworld. You can’t not mention epic staples like The Experts Are Investigating and Born by the Revolution.
But one particular favorite for viewers was the four-part 1979 TV film The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed, directed by Stanislav Govorukhin and featuring a wonderful cast. Vladimir Vysotskiy brilliantly portrayed the tough Moscow Criminal Investigation Department detective Zheglov, while Vladimir Konkin played the very young Volodya Sharapov, who joined the force right after the war, where he had commanded a reconnaissance unit. For Konkin, this role was probably the most significant in his entire career—he never played anything else quite as memorable. And the characters outgrew the film itself long ago—making their way into jokes, songs (like Lyube’s “Atas”), and everyday culture.
At the heart of the story is the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department’s fight against a brutal, elusive gang known as the Black Cat, which terrorized postwar Moscow.
I loved this film too. I’ve rewatched it countless times since, and every year I noticed something I hadn’t caught before, simply because I was too young back then. What’s more, as I got older, even my attitude toward the characters began to change (but more on that later).
Back then, as a kid, my parents explained to me that the film was based on the Vayner brothers’ novel The Age of Mercy (and, by the way, they also wrote the screenplay for the adaptation themselves). In those years, Arkady and Georgy Vayner, for some reason, signed their books simply as “Vayner brothers.” They wrote a lot of detective fiction that was adapted for the screen too, but The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed outdid all the rest. Interestingly, in the post-Soviet era the novel even got retitled and started being published as The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed—even though that’s the title of the adaptation, not the original work. But marketers know best how to sell things.
You might think that with a childhood like that, I would have read the book back then too. But no! Even though it was sitting on our shelf. And I still can’t understand why that happened. For some reason the title itself put me off—it sounded odd to a kid: an “age” of some kind of mercy. What did mercy have to do with it? In the film (as in the book), the phrase is said by Sharapov’s elderly neighbor, but amid all the action and suspense, that small kitchen conversation simply got lost on a child. So I didn’t read the book in childhood. And later I was afraid to pick it up, worried it would ruin my impression of the film (it often happens that a great adaptation outshines the original—though the opposite is just as common).
Still, I decided to fill in this gap. And now I think it was for the best. The book needed to wait for its time. If I had read it as a child, at best I would have taken it as an adventure novel. Now, though, I saw all its depth and the complexity of its characters—things the film shows too, but in the book you feel them more strongly and in a more layered way.
Comparing the novel and the adaptation, I think the film was actually hurt by the choice of Vladimir Vysotskiy for the role of Major Zheglov. Vysotskiy was too good in that part: his Zheglov, for all the ambiguity of his worldview (which the on-screen Sharapov argues with him about), pulls the viewer to his side through sheer charisma and energy. Yes, sometimes you can frame a criminal, because “a thief belongs in prison.” The goal is noble. And the lives of ordinary Soviet citizens are at stake. Vysotskiy’s performance overshadows all the ambiguity—and the ugliness—of his character. And if you haven’t read the book, you’d hardly have any questions.
But Zheglov in the novel is different. His code is essentially the same, but he’s much younger than the film version. And while that doesn’t really matter for the detective plot, it matters a lot for the character. Because on the one hand, he’s a ruthless fighter against crime, ready to clear the streets of this scum. On the other hand, he’s a young, proud man who, for the sake of this “great cause,” is ready to compromise the law itself—and to use methods that are far from legal when catching those criminals. What’s more, he divides the world into black and white. In his world there are no shades of gray. He would rather imprison an innocent person than let a guilty one go. That’s exactly what the whole conflict between him and Sharapov is built around.
In the novel, written in 1975 (four years before the adaptation), there are quite a few questions about how honest a law-enforcement officer has to remain in order to achieve their goals. That’s why the substantial storyline with the engineer Gruzdev is no accident: Zheglov labels him a murderer based on very flimsy circumstantial evidence and treats him like a hardened criminal. And even when it’s proven that Gruzdev is innocent, Zheglov doesn’t think he even needs to apologize. Basically: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Even though, in reality, he was systematically breaking an innocent person.
Now, when we know that modern justice systems in many countries—especially post-Soviet ones—don’t shy away from methods like that, this episode hits much harder. The same goes for the killing of a bandit who used to serve alongside Sharapov and was, by the Soviet laws of that era, effectively forced onto a criminal path. The murder served no real purpose, but Zheglov wouldn’t be Zheglov if he allowed even the possibility of a criminal getting away.
And you start reading Sharapov’s dialogue with the neighbor—where they talk about the age of mercy—in a completely different way. Because mercy is the main thing the authors wanted to say, I think. That being merciful is often far more important than being right about everything.
As I said, there’s a reason I didn’t read the novel for so long. It wouldn’t have made this kind of impression on me twenty or thirty years ago. But now I can say it’s a wonderful book—one that time hasn’t hurt, despite its focus on the Soviet police (law enforcement has always had plenty of honest, decent people working in it, and I’ve even had the chance to meet some of them in my own life).
The novel ends on a much sadder note than the film, but that’s exactly what makes it feel more truthful and realistic. I sincerely recommend it if you haven’t read it. I give 5 out of 5 VERY rarely.
My rating: 5/5
