The popularly beloved Russian actor Yuri Vladimirovich Nikulin for most viewers will always be a good-natured hero from comedy films and a brilliant clown of the Moscow circus. And few people will be able to correlate his “funny” images in the movies with a senior sergeant who went through the Great Patriotic War. In one of the episodes of “The Diamond Arm,” Yuri Nikulin’s character, the klutz Gorbunkov, said: “I haven’t held military weapons since the war.” However, not many will realize that behind this lightweight phrase lies the artist’s difficult military experience. After all, Yuri Nikulin has almost 8 years of service and two wars behind him - the Finnish and the Great Patriotic War. “Seven Long Years” are the memories not of a great actor, but of an ordinary soldier who survived hunger, pneumonia and war, but who found the strength to laugh even when there was blood and pain all around.