Irina Onofrei, Multiplicația sovietică în contextul socio-cultural al perioadei brejneviste / Soviet Cartoons in the Social and Cultural Context of the Brezhnev Period
This article examines the interaction between the Soviet animation and the political environment during the Brezhnev era, particularly focusing on the life and work of animators at the studio “Soiuzmultfilm”. By tracing the animators’ family backgrounds, professional, and life experience, this study offers an insight into the particularities of evolution of Soviet animation and its socio-cultural context. As we will argue, the studio “Soiuzmultfilm” created a social substratum of cartoon animators, who through their work produced an alternative message to the official one. The cartoon directors, in search for novel and effective ways to express their inner world, in the early 1960s launched a period full of experiments, which became the “Golden age” of the Soviet animation. The avalanche of styles, genres, and artistic techniques contributed to the apparition of cinema d’auteur genre, which brought international recognition to the Soviet animation.