The history of Russian animation is a very rich, but so far nearly unexplored field for Western film theory and history. As most of Russia's production of animation for cinema and television was created during Soviet times, it may also be referred to as the History of Soviet animation.

Beginnings

The first animator in Russia was Ladislas Starevich, who was of Polish descent and is therefore also known by the name of Wladyslaw Starewicz. Being a trained biologist, he started to make animation with embalmed insects for educational purposes, but soon realized the possibilities of his medium to become one of its undisputed masters later in his life.

After his emigration following the October revolution, animation in Russia came to a standstill for years. Only by the late 1920s Soviet authorities could be convinced to finance experimental studios. These were typically part of a bigger film studio and were in the beginning most often used to produce short animated clips for propaganda.

In doing so, these early pioneers could experiment with their equipment as well as with their estetics. Creators like Ivan Ivanov-Vano, Mikhail Tsekhanovskij or Nikolaj Khodataev made their debut films in a very fresh and interesting way, esthetically very different from American animators. This was partly because of the general atmosphere the Russian avantgarde created around them, partly because they were able to experiment in small groups of enthusiasts, Ivanov-Vano recalls in his mémoires, Kadr za Kadrom (Frame by Frame).

Important films of this era include Ivanov-Vano's On the skating rink (1927), Tsekhanovskij's Post (1929) and Khodataev's The barrel organ (1934).

Another remarkable figure of the time is Aleksandr Ptushko. He was a trained architect, but earlier in his life worked in mechanical engineering. In this field, he is known for the invention of an adding machine that was in use in the Soviet union until the 1970s (an example of it can be seen in Fjodor Khitruks first film as a director, History of A Crime of 1962). When he joined the puppet animation unit of Mosfil'm, he found an ideal environment to live out his mechanical ambitions as well as his artistic ones, and became internationally renowned with the Soviet union's first full-length animation film, The New Gulliver of 1935. This film mixes puppet animation and live acting. It rewrites Jonathan Swift's novel to become more communist, but does so with a didactic verbosity that makes it sometimes hard to bear. It nevertheless is a masterpiece regarding the animation, featuring amazing mass scenes with hundreds of extras, very expressive mimics in close-ups, and innovative, very flexible camera work combined with excellent scenography. Ptushko became the first director of the newly founded Sojuzdetmul'tfil'm-Studio, but soon after left to devote himself to live-action cinema . Still, even in his feature films he showed a liking for stop-motion special effects, e.g. in Ilya Muromets of 1953.

Socialist Realism

In 1934, Walt Disney sent a film reel with some shorts of Mickey Mouse to the Moscow Film Festival . Fjodor Khitruk, then only an animator, recalls his impressions of that screening in an interview in Otto Alder 's film The Spirit of Genius. He was absolutely overwhelmed by the liquidity of the films' images and enthusiastic about the new possibilities for animation that Disney's ways seemed to offer.

Higher officials shared this impression, too, and in 1935, the Sojuzdetmul'tfil'm-Studio was created from the small and relatively independent trickfilm units of Mosfil'm, Sovkino and Mezhrabpromfil'm in order to focus on the creation of Disney-style animation, exclusively using cel techique.

Already since 1932, when a congress of Soviet writers had proclaimed the necessity of Socialist realism, the influence of Futurism and the Russian avantgarde on animation had dwindled. Now, esthetic experiments were shoved off the agenda, and for the next more than twenty years, Sojuzmul'tfil'm, as the studio was called from 1936 onwards, worked in a taylorised way, using cel techique and divison of labour . Like this, it became the leading studio in the Soviet union, producing an ever-growing number of children's and educational animation shorts and features, but the experimental spirit of the founding years was lost.

One of the most alarming examples for the transformation that not only the studios underwent, but also the artists were succumbed to, is Mikhail Tsekhanovskij . The Leningrad-born artist made a name for himself in book illustration and graphics. He found animation to be an ideal medium to transfer his style to and develop his artistic vision further. He became internationally renowned by his film Post, shot in 1929 and earning him a number of prizes at international film festivals. With the establishment of Socialist realism, he had to abandon his innovative and highly convincing style for the then general practice that in Russia has come to be known as "Éclair": The filming of live action, followed by a frame-by-frame projection that had to serve the animators as their only source for the realization of movement. A striking example is the following comparison of two screenshots, taken from two of his films. The left one is taken from the unfinished 1934 film The Tale of the Priest and His Servant Balda, written by Aleksandr Pushkin, the right one from The Tale of Fisherman and Fish of 1950, a folk tale. The differences in visual decisions are clearly visible and characteristic for the transformation not only Mikhail Tsekhanovskij , but Soviet animation as a whole had to go through during that time.

Many artists did not withstand these changes, though, and left the industry for other fields like painting or book illustrations. An example is the ingenious trio of Jurij Merkulov , Zenon Kommissarenko and Nikolaj Khodataev , who after finishing their last film The Barrel Organ 1934 stopped working in animation.

For two decades, the studio confined itself to sober and to an extent tedious adaptations of folk tales and communist myths. An exception might only be found in wartime propaganda spots, shot during evacuation in Samarkand 1941 - 1943, but their humour is arguably unintentional. Nevertheless, directors like the sisters Zinaida and Valentina Brumberg with films like Fedja Zaitsev (1948), Ivan Ivanov-Vano with Mojdadyr (1954; there is a first version of 1927, but it lacks the fluidity of the later version) or Lev Atamanov with The Snow Queen (1957, told after Andersen's tale) managed to create masterpieces of their genre that have been rewarded various prizes at festivals all over the world and have taken a lasting place in animation history.

From Khrushchev Thaw to Perestroika

Russian animation today

References

• Bendazzi, Giannalberto. 1994. Cartoons. One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation. London/Bloomington: John Libbey/Indiana University Press.
• Giesen, Rolf. 2003. Lexikon des Trick- und Animationsfilms. Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf.
• Leslie, Ester. 2002. Hollywood Flatlands. Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-Garde. London, New York: Verso.
• Pilling, Jayne (Ed.). 1997. A Reader in Animation Studies. London et al.: John Libbey.
• Асенин, Сергей Владимирович. 1986. Мир мультфильма. Москва: Искусство.
• Венжер, Наталья Яковлевна (Ed.). 1990. Сотворение фильма. Несколько интервью по служебным вопросам. Москва: Союз Кинематографистов СССР.
• Иванов-Вано, Иван Петрович. 1978. Кадр за кадром, Москва: Искусство.
• Орлов, Алексей Михайлович. 1995. Аниматограф и его анима: психогенные аспекты экранных технологий. Москва: Импето.

External links

• www.animator.ru Russian Animation Society's comprehensive database of Russian animation (in Russian).