According to film historian Robert Osborne, "At the time this movie was made it had one of the largest casts ever assembled ... was very successful ... When it was shown in Moscow, despite all the good will, people who saw it considered it a comedy—its portrayal of average, everyday life in the Soviet Union apparently way off the mark for 1943". "When the Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich saw it, he observed that no Soviet propaganda agency would dare to present such outrageous lies."