Lt. Kijé is the story of an imaginary soldier, created when the Russian Tsar misread a smudged name on a list of his men.
Everyone around the Tsar was too afraid to tell him there was no such person, so they just invented an entire life for the nonextistent KijĆ©. He gets married and become a hero — all on paper. When the Tsar finally demands to meet KijĆ©, the military holds his funeral.
Prokofiev wrote the musical score to the 1934 Russian film that tells the story. You can check it out here.


