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British actor Harry Oldman, starring as Mikhail Matkovsky in the 2012-2019 biopic historical drama TV series, "March of the Siberian Riflemen".
Following the years of the first Russian Vozhd, The series would run for five seasons, beginning in 1959 with Matkovsky's seizure of Magadan (then a shabby port town, as opposed to the bustling metropolis that it is in modern days- far surpassing reclaimed Vladivostok) in his schism of the Russian Fascist Party in response to Konstantin Rodzaevsky's (played by Russell Crowe) pro Nazi-German convictions and erratic, violent nature. The series goes through various events of Matkovsky's life as leader of what would become the Russian National Republic, like; the American mercenary Mitchell WerBell's attempted Coup, the grand showdown with Rodzaevsky, the tragic power struggle against his friend Nikolay Petlin, the brutal war against the Provisionary Central Siberian Revolutionary Council, negotiating unification with warlord Bunyachenko's Republic, then finally ending in 1975 with him signing a declaration of war against the Third Reich in his sickbed, just right before dying of cancer while he ponders his legacy.
The producers had originally wanted to use Russia as a major location for shooting the series, yet came to blows with the Nationalist government who wanted the series to adhere to specific "guidelines" and accept "supervision" to see that Matkovsky nor the National Republic were not being depicted in an unflattering light, considering that Matkovsky has to this day, an endearing Cult of Personality surrounding in him within Russian society as the "forerunner of Russian liberation", the fruits of whose leadership would eventually see Russia reconquering lands from The Ukraine to Outer Manchuria, from the Third Reich and Japanese Empire, though he wouldn't live to see such results.
The series would be highly acclaimed by many critics as one of the best cinematic works on the Russian Anarchy, being compared to the similarly praised 1988 miniseries adaption of Steven Smith's bestseller "Across the Tundra" (the author himself would also be depicted in the first season), in no small part due to Oldman's portrayal of the morally dubious yet still sympathetic Vozhd Matkovsky. Despite it's popularity in the West, the Russian National Republic itself would have a more negative perspective, with figures particularly condemning the show's "misrepresentations" of the Anti-Communist massacres that occurred during and after Matkovsky's conquest of Central Siberia (the National-Laborist regime's line being that such liquidations were a "unfortunately necessary pacification effort") as well as the conflict with Petlin, who the government had long claimed was a powermonger who wanted to usurp the republic and sabotage all that the Vozhd had accomplished as opposed to his portrayal as a pro-Democratic Hero-Antagonist. This discrepant reception between Russia and the West has been seen as a reflection of the distrust between the two, which is becoming more apparent in recent times as the RNR is increasingly seen to be going back to it's fascist roots (Which Matkovsky had claimed to done away with, in 1965) with it's oppression of the Caucasian and Central Asian populations, though there is still a great deal of hesitation to decisively distance from the Russians, in Washington, as the RNR is one of America's biggest trade partners and, because of the vast, rich natural resources especially in Siberia, one of the most invested nations.