Hello and welcome back to picsandportraits.
As mentioned in our recent look at festive retrofuturism, during the Soviet Era, in Russia,
many of the secular traditions associated with Christmas were moved to New Year’s.
This was on account of the government’s banning religious holidays.
However, despite the holiday more or less being outlawed,
media was still produced around Christmas themes and iconography.
Today we are going to be looking at how this was reflected in animation.
Now this is by no means exhaustive. I’ve found a selection of festive Soviet animation,
spanning decades, but first I’d like to take a look at some of the Christmas traditions
in Russia before the revolution and how and why they were moved to New Year’s.
Christianity and Christmas was brought to Kievan Rus’, the cultural predecessor to Russia, in 988,
when Vladimir the Great, ruler of Kievan Rus’, converted to the religion.
The period that followed is known as the Baptism of Rus’,
where the residents of the capital Kiev were baptised and symbols of Slavic paganism purged.
A lot of the traditions we in the west associate with Christmas came to Russia by way of Germany
in the 19th century, including a decorated tree, the tannenbaum, as well as an annual gift giver.
Their answer to St. Nick or Santa Claus is Ded Moroz, translated to Grandpa Frost,
or Father Frost. He grew out of Slavic mythology and is something of a wizard. He carries a staff,
rides in a troika and travels with his granddaughter Snegurochka,
The Snow Maiden, who also acts as his assistant.
Following the Soviet’s seizing power, Christmas and other religious holidays were abolished in
1929, as part of their state policy of atheism. We are seeing some anti-Ded Moroz propaganda here.
Christmas is the coldest, darkest time of the year
and to reward the workers of the Soviet Union, give them something to look forward to,
the Soviet government brought back the Christmas tree in 1935.
Ded Moroz would follow, along with other familiar traditions, like gift giving,
moved to New Year’s to separate it from the religious connection of Christmas.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, which happened on Christmas, 1991,
the holiday was reinstated and Christmas is still observed by some religious sects on December 25,
while the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates it on the 7th of January, just the way their
calendar lines up, but again, most of the festive secular traditions are centred around New Year’s.
Now we covered Olga Khodataeva and Pyotr Nosov’s New Year’s Eve in our Festive Retrofuturism video.
The design of this Ded Moroz was borrowed from 1937’s Father Frost and the Grey Wolf.
This was the earliest piece of animation I could find, also directed by Khodataeva.
It features Ded Moroz interacting with a bunch of woodland creatures,
which you will notice is a theme of a lot of what we are going to be looking at.
Here they are rabbits. Ded sets out for a New Year’s tree, leaving one of the rabbit’s home
alone. A wolf tries to break into the rabbits home, but it is too smart to fall for that.
The wolf changes up its strategy, dressing as Ded Moroz. The rabbit falls for this, gets
kidnapped and the wolf flees, passing the real Ded Moroz, who pursues him. The wolf gets away
though the rabbit manages to escape. It is reunited with Ded Moroz and the other rabbits.
The group goes to the wolf’s house and force it to help them carry their tree back home, leaving
it outside while they decorate and celebrate. They have a party. The wolf asks to come in,
Ded says no, wolf grabs a rabbit and is blown into a freezing lake, presumably to its death.
Father Frost and the Grey Wolf would be remade in 1978 by Vitold Bordzilovskiy.
This retelling is much more padded, and softer,
both aesthetically and in tone. This time the wolf has a sidekick, a crow,
that distracts Ded Moroz so the wolf can steal the toys meant for the forest animals. There is
also a cameo by the Snowman-Postman, or Soviet Frosty, who we will be talking about in a bit.
I am going to be saying this a lot but this is absolutely gorgeous,
from the colours used to the character design and animation. This short is beautiful.
Interesting to note, the Grey Wolf’s appearance here greatly resembles the Wolf from Nu, Pogodi.
No discussion on Soviet animation would be complete without talking about Nu, Pogodi.
This series had the very simple premise of a wolf trying to catch a hare. Think Roadrunner-Wille
E Coyote or Itchy and Scratchy, where the predator repeatedly fails in capturing its prey.
It spanned decades, from the 1960s into the 21st century, and was extremely beloved.
This wolf character can even be thought of as Russia’s answer to Mickey Mouse,
the show was just that popular.
In 1974, Nu, Pogodi celebrated New Year’s with a festive special. It takes place during a New
Year recital, as well a skating rink, or a pond, and a ski hill. This is where the
action climaxes with the wolf falling from a ski lift and getting caught in an avalanche.
Amazing soundtrack here. Great vibe. If you have never
experienced Nu, Pogodi, this series is great.
Travelling back in time to the early ‘50s, we have the Brumberg Sisters’ The Night Before Christmas,
1951. The Brumbergs, Valentina and Zinaida,
were incredibly important to the development of Soviet animation.
Along with Ivan Ivanov-Vano, they pioneered the industry,
and the Night Before Christmas is one of their best known works.
Now this is very different than the poem A Visit From St. Nicholas, which is commonly referred
to as The Night Before Christmas. You know, happy Christmas to all and to all a good night.
There is no Santa Claus here. Instead this is adaptation of the Nikolai Gogol story,
Christmas Eve, published in 1832.
It features a devil, a witch and a blacksmith who sets out to get the shoes of the queen
because that is a condition placed on him by the woman he loves.
If he wants to marry her, he needs to get the shoes.
The Night Before Christmas is somehow the most bizarre thing we are going to be looking at today.
This was produced with the use of rotoscoping. There is
some really interesting lighting effects as well.
It’s gorgeously produced. Again, it looks amazing.
I know it’s before the Soviet Union,
but just because it’s too weird not to include, Gogol’s story was also adapted
by Ladislas Starevich, who was the subject of our Halloween episode a few years ago.
From 1913, this is a silent film, live action, with some stop motion, that follows the story
with images that are absolutely nightmare inducing. I recommend adding this into
your annual Christmas rotation if you want to alienate your friends and loved ones.
Back to something a little more wholesome, a little more adorable, Snowman-Postman, from 1955.
Soviet Frosty, more or less. Children want a tree for the holidays so they
write to Ded Moroz and build a snowman to carry their letter.
It comes to life and along with a dog, sets out to deliver the letter.
On the way, the duo makes enemies of woodland creatures and befriend a bear. There is a lot
of hi-jinx but the letter eventually reaches Ded Moroz and the children get their tree.
Notice the same design here that we saw earlier in Father Frost and the Grey Wolf,
the Snowman with the bucket on his head, a nice little call back, something nostalgic,
for those who grew up with it, I’m sure. This short is very charming. I loved this.
Moving to something just as cute but a little more out there,
we have Boris Stephantsev’s Nutcracker from 1973, adapted from both the Tchaikovsky ballet as well
as its source material, the short story The Nutcracker and Mouse King by E.T.A Hoffman.
The story follows a young girl whose nutcracker comes to life.
She is eventually captured and the nutcracker must defend her against the evil mouse king.
This is gorgeous and at times very psychedelic. The way it uses patterns
and colours along with the music, it’s transfixing. Hypnotic. This is great.
The last piece we are going to be looking at is from 1991,
the same year the Soviet Union was dissolved, Vladimir Arbekov’s Miss New Year.
This is pretty weird.
Forest animals are competing in a beauty contest that is to be determined by a super computer.
A crow, who feels like she is ugly, is encouraged to participate, even though it’s obvious a
vixen fox is likely going to win. Her mother convinces her to participate as she, the mother,
is a computer whiz and rigs the machine for the crow to win, which she does, but then she comes
clean and the fox is awarded the title of Miss New Year and the crow is crowned Miss Honesty.
The computer is also revealed to be a washing machine.
Not much more to say on that.
Before we wrap things up, I would like to look at how the new year was celebrated
outside of animation, if you were to tune in on television the evening of December 31.
I found clips from several different years that followed a similar format.
This shot of the clock at the Kremlin with the year and the national anthem playing.
The Kremlin Clock is apparently synonymous with the New Year,
the ringing of the chimes is similar to the ball dropping at Times Square.
And yeah, that’s about it for today.
I will post links to all of these in the description if you want to check them out.
Again, this was not meant to be exhaustive, and I am no expert,
so if there was something I missed or mistaked, feel free to comment or correct down below.
If you enjoyed this video, give us a thumbs up, subscribe if you haven’t,
and if you have the means, please, consider supporting us on Patreon.
We have a new episode of Futurefilm over there,
looking at the festive futurism of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
$5 a month gets you access to that and dozens of other videos
and keeps these videos coming out regularly. That’s patreon.com/picsnportraits.
If you’re in the mood for more festive content, check out
the retrofuturism video if you haven’t, or any of our other
Christmas specials. We have one on anime, propaganda, and Rankin/Bass, Rudolph and Frosty.
There is a Christmas Sleepcore coming up later this week but that just about wraps up our
holiday content for this year. Thank you all so much for your interest and support this year.
I know it hasn’t been the easiest or best year for a lot of people but knowing you see value in this,
what I’m doing here, means the world to me and has made this year one of my best.
So merry Christmas, happy holidays, happy New Year and all the best for 2022.
Thank you.