The history of Russian animation is the visual art form produced by Russian animation makers. As most of Russia's production of animation for cinema and television were created during Soviet times, it may also be referred to some extent as the history of Soviet animation. It remains a nearly unexplored field in film theory and history outside Russia.
Beginnings
The first Russian animator was Alexander Shiryaev, a principal ballet dancer and choreographer at the Mariinsky Theatre who made a number of pioneering stop motion and traditionally animated films between 1906 and 1909. He built an improvised studio at his apartment where he carefully recreated various ballets — first by making thousands of sketches and then by staging them using hand-made puppets; he shot them using the 17.5 mm Biokam camera, frame by frame. Shiryaev did not hold much interest in animation as an art form, but rather saw it as an instrument in studying human plastics.Kisselgoff, Anna. Critic's Notebook; Pioneering Russian Films Show Ballet Master's Wit. New York Times. January 14, 2005. Accessed on: June 23, 2009.Lord, Peter. The start of stop-frame. The Guardian. November 14, 2008. Accessed on: June 23, 2009.Nina Alovert. Belated Premier. Past Pages Come to Life article from the Russian Bazaar magazine, January, 2005 (in Russian) They were mostly forgotten during the Soviet period, mentioned only in the memoirs of his students. In 1995, they were re-discovered by a ballet historian Viktor Bocharov who got hold of Shiryayev's archives and released A Belated Premiere documentary in 2003 with fragments of various films. All of them were later restored and digitized with the help from the Pordenone Silent Film Festival and Aardman Animations.Pordenone diary 2008 – day seven at The Bioscope blog, October 22, 2008
The second person to independently discover animation was Vladislav Starevich. Being a trained biologist, he started to make animation with embalmed insects for educational purposes, but soon realized the possibilities of this medium to become one of the undisputed masters of stop motion later in his life. His first few films, made in 1910, were dark comedies on the family lives of cockroaches, and were so revolutionary that they earned him a decoration from Nicholas II of Russia. He produced a number of other popular animated films with insects at the Aleksandr Khanzhonkov's studio where he also worked as a cinematographer and a director of live-action films, sometimes combining live action with stop motion animation, as in The Night Before Christmas and A Terrible Vengeance (both from 1913). Starevich left Russia after the October Revolution, and for many years, the animation industry was paralyzed.
After the revolution
In the early years after the October Revolution, Russian animation remained undeveloped compared to cinema or theatre. The 1923 agitprop animated short Today directed by Dziga Vertov and animated by Ivan Belyaev became a pioneering work and was followed by other cutout films (called flat marionettes at the time) in style of editorial cartoons that satirized bourgeoisie, Church and Western countries, drawn and animated in a sketchy manner; those included films and sketches by Vetrov and Aleksandr Bushkin for Sovkino such as , Humoresques and episodes of Kino-Pravda.Giannalberto Bendazzi (2016). Animation: A World History: Volume I: Foundations - The Golden Age at Google Books, p. 80–81, 79, 174-177Animated Soviet Propaganda review at The New York Times, March 13, 2007Alexander Buskin's filmography at Animator.ru
In 1924, Mezhrabpom-Rus released the critically acclaimed Interplanetary Revolution that satirized Aelita. It also utilized cutout animation along with the constructivism art style and was developed independently by three artists — Nikolai Khodataev, Zenon Komissarenko and Yuri Merkulov — who headed the first Soviet animation studio at the All-Union Technicum of Cinematography. In 1925, it was followed by a government-backed China in Flames made by the same team along with Ivan Ivanov-Vano, Vladimir Suteev and the Brumberg sisters. With 1000 meters of film and 14 frames per second it ran over 50 minutes at the time, which made it the first Soviet animated feature film and one of the first in the world.Larisa Malyukova (2013). OVERcinema. Modern Russian animation. — Saint Petersburg: Umnaya Masha, p. 264–265, 268 Sergey Kapkov (2006). Encyclopedia of Domestic Animation, p. 14–21
During the late 1920s, the industry started moving away from agitation. In 1927, Merkulov, Ivanov-Vano and directed the first Soviet cartoon aimed at children — based on the fairy tale in verse by Korney Chukovsky. Made at Mezhrabpom-Rus, it combined traditional animation and some live action scenes.Senka the African at YouTube, public domain (English subtitles)Ivan Ivanov-Vano (1980). Frame by Frame. — Moscow: Iskusstvo, 239 pages, p. 34, 98, 102, 112–129, 150, 12–13, 223–226 Same year Ivanov-Vano and Cherkes worked on , another hand-drawn short that featured a distinguishable art style (white lines against black background).The Skating Rink, original version at YouTube, public domain (English subtitles) It was written and directed by Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky and Nikolai Bartram, founder of the Moscow Toy Museum, who also produced Bolvashka's Adventures that combined live action and stop motion animation in a story about a Pinocchio-like wooden boy.Semyon Ginzburg. Bolvashka's Adventures article from the Hand-Drawn and Stop-Motion Animated Films book (1957) (in Russian)Bolvashka's Adventures at Animator.ru The idea was extended in a spiritual successor — Bratishkin's Adventures, the first Soviet animated series created between 1928 and 1931 by Yuri Merkulov and Aleksandr Ptushko at Mosfilm.Aleksandr Lukich Ptushko article from the Great Soviet EncyclopediaIt Happened at Stadium (Bratiskin's Adventures) (1928) at YouTube, public domain (in Russian)Gulliverkino: Far Side of the Fairy Tale. Aleksandr Ptushko - Innovations article from Iskusstvo Kino, May 5, 2015 (in Russian)
In 1928, Nikolai Khodataev, his sister Olga Khodataeva and the Brumberg sisters produced a hand-drawn animated short stylized as traditional Nenets art that followed a dramatic narrative and used an innovative technique of printing on thin celluloid. A 24-minute stop motion film The Adventures of the Little Chinese was directed same year by and could be considered a return to the traditions of Ladislas Starevich.The Adventures of the Little Chinese at kinoglaz.fr
Mikhail Tsekhanovsky's Post (1929, cutout/cel animation) was both a return to constructivism traditions and a big step forward: it was successfully exported and widely shown around the world, while in the USSR it changed the perception of animation as an art form. It also became the first colorized Soviet animated film and one of the first to get a musical score and a voiceover by Daniil Kharms.Svetlana Kim, Aleksandr Deryabin. A Breath of Freedom. Diaries of Mikhail Tsekhanovsky at the Notes by Film Historian magazine, 2001 (in Russian) Mikhail and his wife Vera Tsekhanovskaya led an animation studio at Lenfilm where a number of distinctive hand-drawn and stop motion films were created throughout the 1930s, including the much-praised (1938) by .Eleonora Guylan, Peter Bagrov. Once upon a time... Memoirs about the Leningrad pre-war animation at the Notes by Film Historian magazine, 2005 (in Russian)Sergei Asenin (2012). The World of Animation // The Tropes of Soviet Animation, p. 45–46. — Moscow: Print-on-Demand, 303 pages The team actively applied color using the original dye-transfer process invented by Lenfilm specialists, similar to Technicolor.
In 1933, the couple collaborated with Dmitri Shostakovich and Alexander Vvedensky on the first traditionally animated Soviet feature — The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda, a satirical opera loosely based on the fairy tale in verse by Alexander Pushkin and stylized as ROSTA posters. Despite many problems, including the infamous bullying of Shostakovich in press, the film was nearly finished and had been stored at Lenfilm until 1941 when almost all of it was destroyed in fire caused by the bombings of Leningrad.John Riley (2005). Dmitri Shostakovich: A Life in Film. — New York: I.B.Tauris, 150 pages Tsekhanovsky is also credited with invention of graphical sound along with Arseny Avraamov and . They were challenged by a group led by who made a number of animated shorts based on their own idea of "drawing paper sound".Sound, Speech, Music in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema, 2014 by Indiana University Press, p. 22, 33 The Crow's Dance by Nikolai Voinov, 1933, public domain (in Russian)
In 1935, Aleksandr Ptushko directed The New Gulliver, one of the world's first full-length animated movies that combined detailed stop motion with a live actor (a 15-year-old boy). The film featured from 1,500 to 3,000 different puppets with detachable heads and various facial expressions, as well as camera and technical tricks.Now in America, the Films of the Soviet Walt Disney article from The New York Times, December 30, 2001
The international success of the movie allowed Ptushko to open his own "division of 3D animation" at Mosfilm which also worked as a school for beginning animators. In four years, they created a dozen of stop motion shorts; most of them, such as (1936), were based around Russian folklore, traditional art (with the involvement of artists from Palekh) and could be watched in full color thanks to the newly invented three-color film process by .Nikolai Mayorov. The Color of Soviet Cinema from the Film Expert's Notes magazine № 98, 2011 (in Russian) In 1939, Ptushko directed another feature — The Golden Key based on the popular Soviet fairy tale; it also combined stop motion with live action, but to a lesser extent.
Simultaneously, Alexandre Alexeieff who fled for France during the Russian Civil War developed a pinscreen animation technology along with his wife, Claire Parker that allowed for a wide spectre of special effects achieved through the use of hundreds of thousands of pins that formed different patterns. Despite the status of white émigré in the USSR his films were well known among Russian professionals and inspired various artists, most famously Yuri Norstein. In the mid-1990s Alexeieff's daughter visited Moscow and presented her father's works to the . Today he is commemorated as a patriarch of Russian animation.Irina Margolina, Eduard Nazarov. Animation from A to Z. Alexandre Alexeieff documentary series, episodes 3–4, REN TV, 1996Sergei Asenin (1983). The Wisdom of Fiction: Masters of Animation about Themselves and Their Art. — Moscow: Iskusstvo, p. 37
Soyuzmultfilm, 1936–1960
In September 1933, the Principal Management of the Photo-Cinematographic Industry (GUKF) ordered to provide animators with facilities and equipment; meanwhile, specialized script-writers were hired for Animated feature films. who headed the Amkino Corporation, a New York-based company responsible for distribution of Soviet movies in North America, was given the task to study the animation processes at Disney and Fleischer Studios.Kirill Malyantovich. How they fought cosmopolites at Soyuzmultfilm article from the Notes by Film Historian magazine, 2001 (in Russian) Next year Smirnov returned to Moscow and founded an Experimental Animation Workshop under the Main Directorate of the Photo-Cinematographic Industry where he, Alexei Radakov, Vladimir Suteev and started "developing the Disney style". In 1935, Walt Disney himself sent a film reel with Three Little Pigs and Mickey Mouse shorts to the Moscow International Film Festival that made a lasting impression on Soviet animators and officials.