In 1973, the most successful TV spy series ever to be broadcast in the USSR, went on air. The central character was a Soviet secret agent in Nazi Germany, Max Otto von Stierlitz. Dina Newman speaks to actor Eleonora Shashkova who played Stierlitz's wife. Photo: the script-writer Julian Semenov (l) and actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who played Stierlitz (r), on set in Moscow in 1972. Credit: courtesy of Julian Semenov Foundation.