I have a great fondness for this series. I discovered this - like so many other animation gems - in art school and fell in love with it instantly. What annoyed me a bit was how my friends responded to it when I showed it to them - that it was better than the Disney version. I mean, I get it, art school and showing disdain for mainstream things like Disney is to be expected (especially in the peak hipster years of the late aughts), but still.
I love both. I love how different they are, how they're both true to the source material (on the Disney side I'm limiting myself to the 1977 version) while taking it in different directions.
For example, shortly after my daughter first learned how to walk, I saw her do that cute awkward chubby baby-waddle in a yellow onesie. That made me realize that Disney's Pooh is basically animated like a young toddler. It feels obvious now but I never realized it. Makes sense, of course, given the target audience, and the fact that most of E.H. Shepard's illustrations of Pooh are quite "toddler-shaped" as well. Which brings me to these passages:
> Then I remembered that, in my childhood, I had a scruffy teddy bear with a flattened ear and one eye, because I had horsed around with it a lot. No neck; the head was simply flat against the body. That’s how I drew it. And Khitruk asked, “Where’s the neck?” I answered, “What for?” And then we came up with the idea that he wouldn’t have a neck and would turn with his entire body.
> After the team persuaded Khitruk to keep it, Pooh’s poor coordination became a signature of his character.
They didn't copy Shepard's illlustration, but teddy bears are universally toddler-shaped so "Vinni-Pukh" ended up somewhat like one too. And they ended up with awkward (if slightly less toddler-like) movement too! But one with a very different attitude:
> The final effect she got was unique. In the films, Pooh travels on floating feet: he has no legs. But breaking the laws of physics in this way gave his walk an infectious bounce that’s memorable after one viewing.
And elsewhere:
> He cited the passage, “Rabbit and Piglet were sitting outside Pooh’s front door listening to Rabbit, and Pooh was sitting with them.” How do you draw that sentence?
If Disney's Pooh reminds me of my daughter when she was younger, Soyuzmultfilm's Pooh is more like how she's behaving now at three-and-a-half years old: constantly loudly reminding the world that she exists, which is important since she obviously is the center of the universe, often asking questions but then quickly drifting off in her own thoughts when I try to answer her, overflowing with unearned yet sincere confidence that her conclusions are correct, and bravely stomping around exploring and trying out whatever half-baked ideas pop up in her head.
Disney's Pooh is a cuddly baby toddler, Soyuzmultfilm's Pooh the fun but exhausting kid full of life before education gets to them. In other words: fundamentally “a philosopher, a dreamer.”
What a thoughtful, beautiful comment! Thank you for writing this -- it's a great read with a lot of insight, and angles on these films we hadn't considered before. It isn't normal for us to pin comments, but, for this one, it's a necessity. Thanks again!
I work with a Lithuanian woman who introduced me to these wonderful films, as it was one of those things she’d watched as a child (even after the collapse of the USSR). They’re utterly delightful, not necessarily better or worse than Disney’s take (FWIW I’ve always loved them as well, almost as much as I love the books and the original illustrations) but need to be watched.
It's fascinating that the roots of these films went so deep in Eastern Europe outside Russia that they survived in post-Soviet times -- we've seen some evidence of that in the past ourselves. (And definitely agreed that the Soyuzmultfilm Pooh is necessary viewing!)
I first learned about this at coffee hour at an Orthodox church, where someone remarked that “Eeyore has the Russian spirit.” Someone then brought this up on YouTube to show everybody.
Haha, that's really cool! We've heard from a lot of folks about how they discovered these films, and so many of the stories are different. Wonderful that they've spread in these unexpected, real-life ways.
I got my start in animation working at Disney's Sydney studio: Disney Television Animation Australia Pty Ltd [a catchy title we should've put to music].
Anyone new to animation, like myself, was trained up in studio with the Disney Winnie the Pooh characters, esp. Pooh with his 'potato head' that's a different shape from any direction. God, it was a chore! 😄
Still, I conquered and went on to work on 5-6 series for the studio. Not only was it the best work experience I've ever had [note: we were in Sydney, not LA - hu-u-uge difference], I became very familiar with the silly bear's head. So, to see this Russian Pooh is a delightful surprise! Who doesn't love a walk cycle, and those backgrounds are an absolute joy. Thank you for this! 😊
Thanks so much for sharing this -- really cool to learn a bit more about that branch of Disney! And happy we could introduce you to this alternate version of Pooh. Glad you enjoyed the piece!
The sustained impact of this character is pretty incredible. There are only a handful of Soviet animated films that remain so widely known and beloved (Hedgehog in the Fog being one). But the films are so wonderful, it's easy to see why they've endured!
Khitruk's Winnie the Pooh is a gem, and he was a humble animator genius! The cutest thing is how Russians pronounce the Pooh, with K, and the songs Winnie sings are full of puns and are an utter delight.
Khitruk was absolutely one of the animation greats -- we're huge fans of his films and writing. There's really no one else who could've made these Winnie-the-Pooh shorts quite the same way!
I absolutely adore Vinni-Pukh! No Eastern European upbringing or anything, but I stumbled across a wonderful intro to Soviet animation YouTube video a few years back and learned all about it, along with Cheburashka, Hedgehog in the Fog and all those other gems.
They're fantastic films! Same with the others you mentioned. That introductory video has done a lot to spread awareness of this work -- it's awesome to see. Definitely recommend the site Animatsiya as well if you ever want to explore further. We know the guy who runs it, and it's a real treasure trove: https://www.animatsiya.net/
This really is a great write-up; this could honestly serve as a neat introduction for those who want to get into Soviet animation, but want to start off with something that feels familiar. I was curious if leaving out Christopher Robin was intentional, and it's neat to know definitively that was a conscious choice. Probably for the best since the character was based on the author's son.
Even though I have only watched the first short as of writing, it still convinced me that we should push for more countries to give their takes on well-known classic stories (I even joked in my Letterboxd review that it's the biggest argument against globalization). The Soviet Union was truly a wild west when it came to adaptations, because since they didn't recognize copyright laws in the same way as the outside world, you had wild interpretations of works that we typically consider having a "definitive" adaptation, whether that's things like Lord of the Rings, Moomin, The Cat in the Hat, to stuff like Pinocchio and the Wizard of Oz, both of which grew into their own creations (The Adventures of Buratino and Tales of the Magic Land repsectively)
.
There's some healthy benefits and neat perspectives when the entire world doesn't grow up on the same things. As you state in this piece, it shows what can happen when you get a team of artists together to create a design for a character and they aren't pressured to make them "marketable".
I was actually thinking about something Ollie & Scoops creator Nico Colaleo recently tweeted out: "Always amazed how Looney Tunes was made with the mindset that each cartoon would only be watched ONCE in theaters between movies and news reels then never again... and they're still THAT good. Imagine if the LT crew knew we'd still be loving and talking about them 100 years later".
I have similar, more extreme thoughts about non-American, non-Japanese media that are as old as these shorts. It's one thing for any of these animators to possibly wonder if people would still care about their work decades from now, it's another to think that anyone outside their home country would ever watch them, let alone be inspired by them. To use an example from comics, with the exception of a handful of curious nerds, I don't think anyone expected Jucika to gain any notoriety outside Hungary, especially decades after the death of her creator, Pál Pusztai. I have theories on why that came about, but to keep my point simple, you never know what old media whole swathes of people will take interest in. As someone once said, "You can't ignore something if you don't know it exists".
It's also neat that all these film reels and production art has been kept taken care of. In an alternate timeline, all of these could've easily been lost in some storage fire.
One tidbit I will note is that while stories like Winnie here end at 3 shorts, a lot of old Russian cartoons like him live on not through new animated productions, but advertising (horray for capitalism!! /s). Internet creator Sienduk/Сыендук (most well-known for being the official Russian voice-over actor for "Rick & Morty, as well as making an indie pilot called "Bad Mascot/Плохой маскот" with the company "nerds") made a video about the different instances of this (content warning for NSFW humor; use auto-translate for those who can't speak Russian):
The most fascinating to me are the regional adverts that clearly didn't get the Union of Cartoons' approval. Old habits die hard it seems.
(Personal news item: Recently, the British Film Institute has started up an archive collection for "online moving images" , AKA a library of videos created by British citizens and uploaded to the Internet. There are previous collections entirely devoted to animation, but this collection has some notable entries involving animation, such as the "Badger Badger Badger" video by Jonti "Weebl" Picking. They have a neat 10-minute video explaining their process and philosophy here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNqbcZzXnpI, and here's a sample of what they have collected: https://replay.bfi.org.uk/collection/458. They are still looking for submissions.)
I have the, perhaps rather simplistic, image of Soviet animation having two main strands or traditions. One is indebted to Disney (brought to the young USSR in the same process that brought Henry Ford).
The other -competing- tradition comes from the illustration world, very heavy on design and acting. Vinny Pukh is the epitome of this sensibility.
It would be interesting to explore the differences between the Russian and the USA version of Pooh in terms of what was going on politically and socially in the 2 countries and how that might’ve shown up differently on the cartoon versions-both visually and with their personas.
I have a great fondness for this series. I discovered this - like so many other animation gems - in art school and fell in love with it instantly. What annoyed me a bit was how my friends responded to it when I showed it to them - that it was better than the Disney version. I mean, I get it, art school and showing disdain for mainstream things like Disney is to be expected (especially in the peak hipster years of the late aughts), but still.
I love both. I love how different they are, how they're both true to the source material (on the Disney side I'm limiting myself to the 1977 version) while taking it in different directions.
For example, shortly after my daughter first learned how to walk, I saw her do that cute awkward chubby baby-waddle in a yellow onesie. That made me realize that Disney's Pooh is basically animated like a young toddler. It feels obvious now but I never realized it. Makes sense, of course, given the target audience, and the fact that most of E.H. Shepard's illustrations of Pooh are quite "toddler-shaped" as well. Which brings me to these passages:
> Then I remembered that, in my childhood, I had a scruffy teddy bear with a flattened ear and one eye, because I had horsed around with it a lot. No neck; the head was simply flat against the body. That’s how I drew it. And Khitruk asked, “Where’s the neck?” I answered, “What for?” And then we came up with the idea that he wouldn’t have a neck and would turn with his entire body.
> After the team persuaded Khitruk to keep it, Pooh’s poor coordination became a signature of his character.
They didn't copy Shepard's illlustration, but teddy bears are universally toddler-shaped so "Vinni-Pukh" ended up somewhat like one too. And they ended up with awkward (if slightly less toddler-like) movement too! But one with a very different attitude:
> The final effect she got was unique. In the films, Pooh travels on floating feet: he has no legs. But breaking the laws of physics in this way gave his walk an infectious bounce that’s memorable after one viewing.
And elsewhere:
> He cited the passage, “Rabbit and Piglet were sitting outside Pooh’s front door listening to Rabbit, and Pooh was sitting with them.” How do you draw that sentence?
If Disney's Pooh reminds me of my daughter when she was younger, Soyuzmultfilm's Pooh is more like how she's behaving now at three-and-a-half years old: constantly loudly reminding the world that she exists, which is important since she obviously is the center of the universe, often asking questions but then quickly drifting off in her own thoughts when I try to answer her, overflowing with unearned yet sincere confidence that her conclusions are correct, and bravely stomping around exploring and trying out whatever half-baked ideas pop up in her head.
Disney's Pooh is a cuddly baby toddler, Soyuzmultfilm's Pooh the fun but exhausting kid full of life before education gets to them. In other words: fundamentally “a philosopher, a dreamer.”
What a thoughtful, beautiful comment! Thank you for writing this -- it's a great read with a lot of insight, and angles on these films we hadn't considered before. It isn't normal for us to pin comments, but, for this one, it's a necessity. Thanks again!
I work with a Lithuanian woman who introduced me to these wonderful films, as it was one of those things she’d watched as a child (even after the collapse of the USSR). They’re utterly delightful, not necessarily better or worse than Disney’s take (FWIW I’ve always loved them as well, almost as much as I love the books and the original illustrations) but need to be watched.
It's fascinating that the roots of these films went so deep in Eastern Europe outside Russia that they survived in post-Soviet times -- we've seen some evidence of that in the past ourselves. (And definitely agreed that the Soyuzmultfilm Pooh is necessary viewing!)
Would you happen to know if the books are still published and if so where can they be purchased ? Thanks.
I first learned about this at coffee hour at an Orthodox church, where someone remarked that “Eeyore has the Russian spirit.” Someone then brought this up on YouTube to show everybody.
Haha, that's really cool! We've heard from a lot of folks about how they discovered these films, and so many of the stories are different. Wonderful that they've spread in these unexpected, real-life ways.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist
(apologies to any Russian speakers, I obviously relied on machine translations and I presume this is gibberish)
https://i.imgur.com/CyDfi7P.png
EDIT: and here's a version without the machine-translated "different" in there
https://i.imgur.com/AkQuyUU.png
That's funny! The second one was almost correct, though - it should be "absolyutnoe kino". And for the first one "absolyutno drugoe kino".
Ugh, I forgot to save the textless blank template yesterday, and editing Scorsese's hands like that again would take way too much time 😭.
So I had to resort to GIMP's clone + heal tool and moving some rasterized letters around, apologies for the terrible kerning:
https://i.imgur.com/lM4kV76.png
I got my start in animation working at Disney's Sydney studio: Disney Television Animation Australia Pty Ltd [a catchy title we should've put to music].
Anyone new to animation, like myself, was trained up in studio with the Disney Winnie the Pooh characters, esp. Pooh with his 'potato head' that's a different shape from any direction. God, it was a chore! 😄
Still, I conquered and went on to work on 5-6 series for the studio. Not only was it the best work experience I've ever had [note: we were in Sydney, not LA - hu-u-uge difference], I became very familiar with the silly bear's head. So, to see this Russian Pooh is a delightful surprise! Who doesn't love a walk cycle, and those backgrounds are an absolute joy. Thank you for this! 😊
Thanks so much for sharing this -- really cool to learn a bit more about that branch of Disney! And happy we could introduce you to this alternate version of Pooh. Glad you enjoyed the piece!
That film is a keystone in the childhood of a lot of Soviet childhoods. Every Soviet person I met in art school knew of it!
The sustained impact of this character is pretty incredible. There are only a handful of Soviet animated films that remain so widely known and beloved (Hedgehog in the Fog being one). But the films are so wonderful, it's easy to see why they've endured!
Khitruk's Winnie the Pooh is a gem, and he was a humble animator genius! The cutest thing is how Russians pronounce the Pooh, with K, and the songs Winnie sings are full of puns and are an utter delight.
Khitruk was absolutely one of the animation greats -- we're huge fans of his films and writing. There's really no one else who could've made these Winnie-the-Pooh shorts quite the same way!
Another fantastic post! I had often wondered about this show, snippets of which have lived in my memory. I loved the peek behind the drawings
Thank you so much! Really glad you enjoyed the piece.
I absolutely adore Vinni-Pukh! No Eastern European upbringing or anything, but I stumbled across a wonderful intro to Soviet animation YouTube video a few years back and learned all about it, along with Cheburashka, Hedgehog in the Fog and all those other gems.
They're fantastic films! Same with the others you mentioned. That introductory video has done a lot to spread awareness of this work -- it's awesome to see. Definitely recommend the site Animatsiya as well if you ever want to explore further. We know the guy who runs it, and it's a real treasure trove: https://www.animatsiya.net/
Illuminating issue as always. And I learned through the news bits here about Keanu?! And Hidari!? 🤯😍 I really can’t wait.
Thank you! And that news wowed us this weekend, too. It feels like Hidari is picking up a ton of momentum -- hopefully it get the investors it needs.
awww winnie the pooh my favorite
as someone who grew up watching the USSR version (cause it was my parents favorite) and the disney version— i lovedddd reading this thank you
Really glad you enjoyed the piece! We love these films and it was fun to learn what the team went through along the way.
This really is a great write-up; this could honestly serve as a neat introduction for those who want to get into Soviet animation, but want to start off with something that feels familiar. I was curious if leaving out Christopher Robin was intentional, and it's neat to know definitively that was a conscious choice. Probably for the best since the character was based on the author's son.
Even though I have only watched the first short as of writing, it still convinced me that we should push for more countries to give their takes on well-known classic stories (I even joked in my Letterboxd review that it's the biggest argument against globalization). The Soviet Union was truly a wild west when it came to adaptations, because since they didn't recognize copyright laws in the same way as the outside world, you had wild interpretations of works that we typically consider having a "definitive" adaptation, whether that's things like Lord of the Rings, Moomin, The Cat in the Hat, to stuff like Pinocchio and the Wizard of Oz, both of which grew into their own creations (The Adventures of Buratino and Tales of the Magic Land repsectively)
.
There's some healthy benefits and neat perspectives when the entire world doesn't grow up on the same things. As you state in this piece, it shows what can happen when you get a team of artists together to create a design for a character and they aren't pressured to make them "marketable".
I was actually thinking about something Ollie & Scoops creator Nico Colaleo recently tweeted out: "Always amazed how Looney Tunes was made with the mindset that each cartoon would only be watched ONCE in theaters between movies and news reels then never again... and they're still THAT good. Imagine if the LT crew knew we'd still be loving and talking about them 100 years later".
I have similar, more extreme thoughts about non-American, non-Japanese media that are as old as these shorts. It's one thing for any of these animators to possibly wonder if people would still care about their work decades from now, it's another to think that anyone outside their home country would ever watch them, let alone be inspired by them. To use an example from comics, with the exception of a handful of curious nerds, I don't think anyone expected Jucika to gain any notoriety outside Hungary, especially decades after the death of her creator, Pál Pusztai. I have theories on why that came about, but to keep my point simple, you never know what old media whole swathes of people will take interest in. As someone once said, "You can't ignore something if you don't know it exists".
It's also neat that all these film reels and production art has been kept taken care of. In an alternate timeline, all of these could've easily been lost in some storage fire.
One tidbit I will note is that while stories like Winnie here end at 3 shorts, a lot of old Russian cartoons like him live on not through new animated productions, but advertising (horray for capitalism!! /s). Internet creator Sienduk/Сыендук (most well-known for being the official Russian voice-over actor for "Rick & Morty, as well as making an indie pilot called "Bad Mascot/Плохой маскот" with the company "nerds") made a video about the different instances of this (content warning for NSFW humor; use auto-translate for those who can't speak Russian):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5p9cwmAq8Y
The most fascinating to me are the regional adverts that clearly didn't get the Union of Cartoons' approval. Old habits die hard it seems.
(Personal news item: Recently, the British Film Institute has started up an archive collection for "online moving images" , AKA a library of videos created by British citizens and uploaded to the Internet. There are previous collections entirely devoted to animation, but this collection has some notable entries involving animation, such as the "Badger Badger Badger" video by Jonti "Weebl" Picking. They have a neat 10-minute video explaining their process and philosophy here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNqbcZzXnpI, and here's a sample of what they have collected: https://replay.bfi.org.uk/collection/458. They are still looking for submissions.)
I have the, perhaps rather simplistic, image of Soviet animation having two main strands or traditions. One is indebted to Disney (brought to the young USSR in the same process that brought Henry Ford).
The other -competing- tradition comes from the illustration world, very heavy on design and acting. Vinny Pukh is the epitome of this sensibility.
It would be interesting to explore the differences between the Russian and the USA version of Pooh in terms of what was going on politically and socially in the 2 countries and how that might’ve shown up differently on the cartoon versions-both visually and with their personas.
I grew up with this series and it has a special place in my heart! Thanks for the deep dive!
I remember this when I was a kid - one of only so many cartoons that were around during the Soviet era.