Krokodil Gena sings a song.


Krokodil Gena is considered to be the Winnie the Pooh of Russia. However, the same animation firm, Soyuzmultfilm, wanted to do a Russian version of Winnie the Pooh, although the Soviet censors required very specific changes. Pooh is less of a lovable but optimistic victim of circumstance and more vindictive, if not down right deceitful.



Soyuzmultfilm was unique among animation firms in that it was not commercial at all, the Soviet Academy of Film paid them regardless of whether or not they were commercially successful. Because of this, some of their films are bizarre and esoteric, full of strange and subtle Communist dictates, but still slightly subversive at the same time. The live action children's studio, a subsidiary group of the Academy of Film, produced Russian versions of stories that Disney had already covered, of which their version of Mary Poppins was the most popular. In the Russian version of Mary Poppins, the Russian version of Mrs. Banks is a party organizer, and the Jane and Michael characters are dutiful members of the Soviet Pioneers, the official Soviet answer to the Boy Scouts. Mary Poppins was not employed by the Banks family but was actually related to them, a chubby Russian babushka reinvented. Unlike the Julie Andrews Mary Poppins, this babushka Poppins was stern and authoritarian, giving advice to the children who inevitably disobeyed and were punished cruelly for their mistakes.

The most commercially viable series that Soyuzmultfilm ever made was Nu Pogodi, the equivalent of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. It's the continuing tale of a clever and resourceful rabbit who constantly outwits his aggressor, a wolf.



An interesting factoid about Nu Pogodi is that it was a source of contention from party officials who felt it didn't accurately serve the purpose of educating and uplifting the children who watched it. They demanded that the rabbit be given the outfit of the Soviet Pioneers, and they wanted the wolf to be a more prominent capitalist figure, trying to put the rabbit into forced labor, rather than just eating him. In one of the rare instances of out and out victory by artists subjected to censorship, Soyuzmultfilm was able to leverage considerable freedom from these restrictions by getting their cartoons shipped to the outlying Soviet satellite states, thus bringing in enormous income to the Academy of Film. The rabbit was not forced into the Soviet Pioneers and the wolf remained a somewhat lovable idiot.

Another interesting footnote is that Bill Scott, co-creator of Bullwinkle and Rocky, travelled to Russia during the height of the Cold War on a private tourist excursion, after having made several professional friendships with the staff of Soyuzmultfilm. Bill Scott had been a key figure in the lefty UPA studio during the 50s, his ultimate work there being the modern and artsy Telltale Heart, which was an enormous success in the USSR, as were the rest of the UPA cartoons. Upon hitting the border, he was grilled on what he did, and when they found out he was the voice of Bullwinkle, he was interrogated at gunpoint about the characters of Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. Later in his life, Scott discovered he had a thick file at the KGB, and nearly every detail of his life was known. The FBI, who knew Scott had lefty opinions, had him watched steadily when he came back from Russia, suspected of being a spy. Poor Bill Scott, just a poor and relatively anonymous cartoonist, never knew any of this.