Description:

The story of a boy raised by wolves; a call to quell fascism before it can arise again. Based on Lazar Lagin's short story "The Fair-Haired Beast".

The original story was published in the journal "Yunost" (Youth) #4, 1963 and can be read here, with a summary here (both in Russian).

The film contains references to various contemporary political events that had not yet happened when the story was first written (see below), and its screenplay also differs markedly from the original story's plot (though both were written by the same writer).

In the film, the main character's origins are unknown; in the story, his name is Horstl von Vivver, he's born in 1941 as the son of a wealthy German baron, but kidnapped at 18 months by a female wolf who had lost her own pups. In both film and story, he is discovered in a wolf den in 1946 and placed in an orphanage (though in the story, it is his mother who places him there). In the film, he is kidnapped from the orphanage by a shadowy group after the incident with the wolf at the zoo; in the story, the zoo episode is entirely absent, and he is taken back by his father (who returns in 1953 after having been a Prisoner of War in the USSR). In the film, he is then trained to revert to his beastly "wolf" nature; in the story, he's trained in the traditional "Hitler Youth" way (in both story and film, the training successfully erodes his humanity). In both story and film, he is then given command of a human "wolf pack". In the film, the "Wolves" are used to break up demonstrations against the National Democratic Party of Austria (which existed from 1967 until 1988, when its status was revoked for violating Austria's anti-Nazi legislation); in the book, they are used to infiltrate into East Germany under the Berlin Wall.

And finally, the ending: in the story, Horstl slips up and howls during a public holiday on his 24th birthday, causing the public around him to realize his real nature with shock; in the film, Horstl becomes almost like a Fuhrer, and he is accompanied by footage of far-right meetings, US Marines and Western wars - the film warns its viewers against allowing fascism to rise again.