History of Russian Animation

Some say that if you don't go to visit Russia, Russia will come visit you!
But in all fairness Russia has a great and fully evolved animation industry. The animation from Soviet period still holds the wanders of my parents generation. Even my generation grew up watching it (more or less).
It all began with Aleksander Shiryayev. He was a principal dance for the Imperial Russian Ballet, but apart from dancing he did a few puppet-animations. But it was forgotten until the rediscovery of his work in 1995.
After Shiryayev followed Ladislaw Starewicz. I already covered him in one of my previous posts, but those whom did not read it I 'll elaborate: he was a trained biologist who used embalmed insects for his stop motion animations. Also his 1913 41 minute film The Nigh Before Christmas was the first film to use live action and stop motion in the same scene.
After Starewicz emigrated, the Russian animation industry went to a standstill, mainly because of the October Revolution.
Only in 1920's the Russian authorities could start financing experimental studios. Since it was the wartime period, they mainly produced short animated propaganda films. In doing so, the early pioneers like Ivan Ivanov, Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, Nikolay Khodatayev could experiment with the equipment as well as the aesthetics (which were very different from the American animators). As Ivanov mentions this in his memoirs, the aesthetics might have been influenced also by the atmosphere created by the Russian avantgarde.
In 1935, inspired by the short reel from Mickey Mouse, sent by Disney to the Moscow Film Festival, Soyuzdetmultfilm studio was created in order to focus on Disney like animation, exclusivley cel technique.
When Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 proclaimed the end of the personality cult of Joseph Stalin, he started a process of political and cultural renewal in the country. Even though animators still needed a while to free themselves. From the 1960s onwards, animation films gain completely new qualities. The starting point for this was Fyodor Khitruk's film The Story of a Crime (1962). Not only had he changed the animation style to something that resembled what the United Productions of America was doing, but for the first time since the avantgarde years, he was able to tackle a contemporary story.

And really have to share the themes song to this (it' just brilliant):

Finally in the 1970's Nu Pogodi! (Just You Wait) was born and it was the most popular Soviet animated series. To be honest these series hold a special place in my heart, because I grew up watching them. It is simple in its plot-  wolf chasing a rabbit (sort of like Tom and Jerry). But the wolf had a phrase for the end of the episode when he fails to catch the rabbit- "Rabbit, Just You Wait". That's actually my translation, if you know a better one, please let me know. But anyway the animation in this is just awesome. The theme song triggers great nostalgia to everyone from my generation and older.

After the end of the Soviet Union, the situation for Russian animators changed dramatically. On one hand, State subsidies diminished significantly. On the other hand, the number of studios competing for that amount of money rose a good deal. Most of the studios during the 1990s lived on animation for advertisement and on doing commissioned works for big studios from America and elsewhere. Nevertheless, there were a few very successful international co-productions, e.g. Aleksandr Petrov's (former Sverdlovsk Film Studio animator) Oscar-winning The Old Man and the Sea (1999, from Ernest Hemingway's novel) or Stanislav Sokolov's The Winter's Tale (1999, from William Shakespeare's play) that earned the director an Emmy.