AWOL Tigger, or a Soviet Take on the World-Famous Cartoon Characters

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Apart from the Soviet writ­ers’ pro­lific input into the chil­dren lit­er­a­ture, a great deal of sto­ries was trans­lated into Russ­ian, so the kids of the USSR grew up on the sto­ries by Hans Ander­sen, Charles Pier­rot and the Grimm broth­ers. Often the trans­la­tors took the lib­erty of chang­ing the plot of the sto­ry­line: this is how the famous book by A. Milne “Win­nie the Pooh” in its Russ­ian ver­sion fea­tures no Tig­ger yet there are some extra char­ac­ters not from the orig­i­nal script. Arguably, it allowed the trans­la­tor to become some­what of an author and hence their name went onto the book cover (this is what hap­pened to the Russ­ian ver­sion of The Wiz­ard of Oz). As car­toon mak­ing was one of the most devel­oped (and cer­tainly less cen­sored ones) graphic arts, it can be of inter­est to see how the Russ­ian ani­ma­tors saw the tra­di­tional West­ern fairy tales characters.

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Piglet, Win­nie the Pooh and Rab­bit. 1969

The story of Pinoc­chio (Buratino in Rus­sia) is another fine exam­ple of how things got trans­formed on the way from Italy to the USSR: the plot retains very lit­tle of the orig­i­nal story, and the only thing unchanged is the wooden puppet.

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Pier­rot, Buratino (the Russ­ian Pin­noc­chio), and Malv­ina, the beau­ti­ful female pup­pet friend. 1969

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Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood

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The Jun­gle Book: Mowgli, Baloo the bear, Bagheera the black pan­ther and Kaa the python. 1973

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Dr Doolit­tle. 1984

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The Trea­sure Island. 1984

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The Wiz­ard of Oz: Dorothy (Ellie in the Russ­ian ver­sion, for some rea­son); the Scare­crow; the Cow­ardly Lion and the Tin Man. 1974

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Puss in Boots. 1968

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The Nut­cracker, with the orig­i­nal music by Tchaikovsky. 1973.

How­ever, we would fall short of a fair story if we did not men­tion the most famous Russ­ian car­toon of all times — Well, Just You Wait, Hare! It is an orig­i­nal Russian-made script and the plot line, with a loose resem­blance of the Tom & Jerry car­toon. The car­toon is a slap­stick adven­ture of the Hare who is being chased by the Wolf, and each episode (there were 16 of them alto­gether) has its own wee plot. The pop­u­lar­ity of it was so huge that pos­si­bly every­one born in the USSR still has the nicest mem­o­ries of it. Dur­ing the hay days of the Soviet power, this series were imported into the coun­tries of the East­ern Bloc, as well as China, India and some other pro-socialist coun­tries where it found to be liked by the audi­ence, due to very lit­tle spo­ken lan­guage and a happy end of each episode. You can still buy an adapted ver­sion on ama­zon and enjoy it just as much, almost 40 years later.

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The Wolf and the Hare: Well, Just You Wait! 1969


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  • Name

    > this is how the famous book by A. Milne “Win­nie the Pooh”
    > in its Russ­ian ver­sion fea­tures no Tigger

    This is not cor­rect. The well known trans­la­tion made by Boris Zakhoder does fea­ture this char­ac­ter by the name of “Tigra”.

    • Eva For­ever

      The char­ac­ter Tig­ger, known in Russ­ian as Tigra, did not fea­ture in the orig­i­nal series of the Soyuz­mult­film car­toon, where it was left out of the three episodes made.

      Boris Zakhoder him­self often liked to point out that his story of Win­nie the Pooh was not a trans­la­tion — rather, it was a paraphrase.

      • Name

        > The char­ac­ter Tig­ger, known in Russ­ian as Tigra, did not fea­ture
        > in the orig­i­nal series of the Soyuz­mult­film car­toon, where it was
        > left out of the three episodes made.

        This is irrel­e­vant to the orig­i­nal claim, which was made about the book, not the cartoon.

        In fact, there is a per­fectly good rea­son for this char­ac­ter to be left out of the car­toon: Tig­ger was intro­duced in the sec­ond book writ­ten by Milne, The House at Pooh Cor­ner (1928), while soviet car­toon only uses the sto­ries from the first book, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926).

        If any­thing, I would com­plain about Christo­pher Robin, since this is the char­ac­ter that was left out of soviet car­toon, but still appeared in Zakhoder’s adap­ta­tion of the book.

        Please, be care­ful with the facts.

  • cher­rypit

    Great arti­cle :)

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