The Fall of the Empire is a Russian crime, thriller TV miniseries in ten episodes directed and co-written by Vladimir Khotinenko, broadcast in March 2005. It is set in World War I, following Russian counterintelligence officer Sergei Pavlovich Kostin, a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, who works to uncover enemy plots aided by his sidekick Ivan Karlovich Shtol'ts.