The script was adapted from a play by the same name,[2] that was composed by Vsevolod Vishnevsky for Stalin's 70th birthday in 1949[3] and won the Stalin Prize.[4] Ronald Hingley wrote that Vishnevsky's play "magnified Stalin's Russian Civil War record beyond all recognition".[5] Chiaureli's work was one of the only nine Soviet pictures produced during 1951.[6] With a budget of nearly 11,000,000 roubles,[1] it was also the most expensive film made in the Soviet Union up to that time.[7] In addition, it was the last of Chiaureli's "super-productions about Stalin."[8]