LA Times article about Soviet propaganda cartoons

[Laura Pontieri Hlavacek]

Indeed these animated films are very interesting, and there are some  
more at the Gosfilmofond in Moscow.
I'd be happy to exchange opinions on the matter, as I am working on  
publishing my Ph.D. dissertation on Soviet animated films.
Best,
Laura Pontieri Hlavacek


Laura Pontieri Hlavacek
laura.pontieri at aya.yale.edu


On Feb 4, 2007, at 8:50 PM, Shlomit Gorin wrote:

> Feb. 4, 2007
> Soviet propaganda cartoons come to video
> The four-DVD set 'Animated Soviet Propaganda' opens
> the vaults on decades of Cold War humor.
> By Robert W. Welkos, Los Angeles Times
>
> IN 1995, Malibu producer Joan Borsten and her husband,
> the Russian-born actor Oleg Vidov, were poring over a
> library of animated films produced at Moscow's
> Soyuzmultfilm Studio when they discovered buried among
> the children's classics other films that caught their
> attention.
>
> These were no Disney-like fairy tales or Russian folk
> stories. Instead, these animated short films intended
> for the Soviet masses painted a sinister portrait of
> life in capitalist America.
>
> "Black and White," produced in 1933, depicted a
> highway with an endless row of blacks lynched on
> telephone poles. "The Millionaire," made in 1963, told
> the story of a rich American woman who leaves $1
> million to her pet bulldog, who becomes so wealthy and
> powerful that he eventually is elected to Congress.
> And in the 1979 animated short "Shooting Range," a
> jobless American youth finds work in a carnival
> shooting gallery only to discover the evil, greedy
> owner is now charging double — for people to use the
> youth as target practice.
>
> These films, rarely seen in the West, are among
> several dozen included in a four-disc DVD anthology
> titled "Animated Soviet Propaganda" that is being
> distributed by Kino International and Films by Jove.
> The collection retails for $89.
>
> The anthology is divided into categories titled
> "American Imperialists," "Fascist Barbarians,"
> "Capitalist Sharks" and "Onward to the Shining Future:
> Communism." The DVDs include interviews with Russian
> film school professors, directors and animators,
> including famed animator Boris Yefimov, who was 101
> and died two years after being interviewed.
>
> The earliest film in the collection is "Soviet Toys,"
> made in 1924; the last is "History of the Toy," an
> anti-fascist film made six decades later.
>
> Borsten is president of Films by Jove, which acquired
> worldwide distribution rights to many of the Moscow
> studio's animation library.
>
> "After the Bolshevik Revolution, about 200,000
> [Communist] party members inherited a land mass of
> mostly illiterate people," said Borsten. "Lenin said
> film was the best media for propaganda. Within the
> film genre, animation was by far the easiest way to
> say what was bad and what was good."
>
> Joseph Stalin, who succeeded Lenin, ordered the
> building of the state-run animation studio after
> becoming enamored with a Walt Disney film festival
> held in Moscow. But while many of the films produced
> at the studio beginning in 1936 were based on European
> and Russian folk tales, some were blatant political
> propaganda designed to show America and the West in
> the worst possible light.
>
> New Russian Word, a Russian-language daily published
> in New York, said in a recent article that one can't
> help but chuckle at the 1949 animated short "Someone
> Else's Voice," in which "Russian traditionalist
> nightingales hiss and boo" an "obnoxious magpie who
> returns from the West having learnt to sing jazz while
> on vacation."
>
> "In 1936, most animation were films for children,"
> Borsten said. "But while the studio was making
> beautiful films for children, it was also making
> propaganda for adults and children."
>
> Over the decades, the depiction of capitalists in
> Soviet animation rarely changed.
>
> They were shown as greedy, racist, cigar-chomping fat
> cats bent on exploiting the noble worker. That
> characterization didn't change even with
> liberalization of communist rule.
>
> "After perestroika," Borsten noted, "Americans who
> came to Russia to invest were still being called
> 'capitalist sharks.' "
>
> Some of the early works in the collection were
> produced by Bolshevik collectives; later works were
> produced at the Soviet animation studio. But all of
> them serve to point out what the Russian people were
> subjected to during the years of Communist
> totalitarianism.
>
> Vidov believes the animated propaganda films that he
> grew up with kept Soviet citizens wary about life
> outside their borders. People inside the Soviet Union
> came to believe that America was a scary place, where
> there was high unemployment, blacks were routinely
> beaten, and capitalists had bags of money and were
> free to abuse those who had less.
>
> "It was a war between socialism and capitalism," Vidov
> said. "Now, there are rich and poor in Russia. So,
> now, I don't think anybody is talking about it."
>
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