Curiosidades

The winter in 1997 was uncommonly snowless and warm, but the movie makers wanted to film snowy Moscow streets and the Kremlin. So they used hundreds of tons of artificial snow.

When the Shrovetide (Maslenitsa) scene was being filmed, the temperature on the lake got up to twelve degrees Celsius (fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit), and the ice could have broken with all of the actors, actresses, and decorations. So the filmmakers had to cover it with dry ice, and use liquid nitrogen constantly.

The title as it is shown in the credits uses old Russian orthography, abandoned after the October Socialist Revolution of 1917.

For the scenes showing the Kremlin, the luminescent stars on the top of the building's towers had to be turned off, as the story takes place in 1885, and the stars were installed in the 1930s. This was the second of two times the stars were ever turned off, the first one being during World War II, when the Kremlin was camouflaged by turning off all of its lights.

All the dishes used in the movie were custom made by Czech glassblowers.