Eisenstein had earlier suffered Executive Meddling when his Alexander Nevsky, intended by him to be a populist blockbuster with anti-Nazi subtext got shelved because of Stalin's Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. During the interim, Eisenstein had returned to theatre rather than film, and when war broke out and he and other film workers were sent to Kazakhstan's Alma Ata studios, he came up with making a film on Ivan the Terrible. Eisenstein biographers and fans seeking to restore his post-war reputation as a Stalinist stooge, have perhaps exaggerated the film as a critique of Stalinism and so see Part II's true reason for being shelved as being for its portrayal of the Oprichniki terror campaign.
A meeting between Stalin, Eisenstein and his culture ministers survives in a minute where Stalin criticized Eisenstein's depiction of the Oprichniki as the Ku Klux Klan and Ivan IV as a "Hamlet type". Others argue that Stalin was naturally mercurial and paranoid, and that having revived Tsarist nostalgia during the War, once it was over, he didn't want to push it, and naturally lost interest in the project. This follows the pattern of Alexander Nevsky. It's unlikely at any rate that if Stalin truly believed the films were critical of him and his regime, that he would allow Eisenstein and his reputation to survive intact.
Screwed by the Network: The third film was cancelled after Stalin was not amused by the second one.
Unfinished Episode: Part III has a complete script, but its production was stopped by the political troubles that held up the release of Part II, and Eisenstein's death put an end to plans to resume it.
What Could Have Been: For historians, Part III and Eisenstein's original vision for it, as it survives in stills and storyboards, suggests that it was this shelved and cancelled third part that would have been more directly reflective of Stalinism than the first two. Most of the footage was destroyed and it survives only in script notes and stills. But Part III would have seen Ivan turn on his Oprichniki and execute his loyalists in a manner that is allegorical to the Yezhovshchina. The end of Part III would have featured an old and dying Ivan walking on a beach, all alone, with Russia in ruins behind him.
where Stalin criticized Eisenstein's depiction of the Oprichniki as the Ku Klux Klan and Ivan IV as a "Hamlet type". Others argue that Stalin was naturally mercurial and paranoid, and that having revived Tsarist nostalgia during the War, once it was over, he didn't want to push it, and naturally lost interest in the project. This follows the pattern of Alexander Nevsky. It's unlikely at any rate that if Stalin truly believed the films were critical of him and his regime, that he would allow Eisenstein and his reputation to survive intact.