Patrick Jackson
BBC News
**Russian actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who immortalised a fictional wartime spy called Stirlitz in a 1973 Soviet TV series, has died in Moscow at 81.**Tikhonov, more familiar to Western audiences as Prince Andrei in an epic Soviet adaptation of War And Peace in the 1960s, had suffered a heart attack.
As Stirlitz, he was as familiar to Soviets as James Bond in the West.
Jokes about his encounters with the Gestapo chief Mueller in Nazi Berlin remain a national treasure in Russia.