5 Soviet cartoons banned in the USSR: you have certainly seen one!

And yet, some final cut cartoons have been blacklisted. One of them will surely surprise you – we’ve all seen it and used the quote more than once in our conversations: “It’s better to waste a day, then fly in five minutes.”

You have probably already guessed that this is an animated film about a vulture and an ostrich, now known to everyone. In 1985 it was filmed by directors Igor Kovalev and Alexander Tatarsky, but they did not leave Wings, Legs and Tails in the show. The first version was created without lyrics, and Ekran studio head Boris Hessin was distracted upon acceptance and didn’t understand what it was about.

“Everything is ugly, you don’t understand anything. There’s a bird out there – whether it’s a vulture or a crow – what is it doing? I do not understand. She goes somewhere, does something there. How are two? Are there two birds? There is a bird! Hassin was outraged. Only a year later, Wings, Legs and Tails was lengthened and words were added to it – after that the cartoon was approved.

This satirical cartoon for adults was made by Yefim Gamburg in 1978: each of the four short stories showed a bank robbery with “characteristics” from different countries – the United States, France, Italy and the USSR. As the screenwriter of the tape, Mikhail Lipskerov, later said, “Theft in Russian” was called “slander and spitting” and banned – all four parts appeared on the screens only in 1988.

The cartoon “Lyamzi-tyri-bondi, the evil wizard” in 1976 was directed by Marianna Novogrudskaya based on the script by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. The plot may seem innocent: little Kolya Rogov is kidnapped from the sandbox by the evil wizard boy Lyamzi-Tyri-Bondi, who has no friends, but Kolya invites him to live with him with his parents. Lyamzi disagrees at first, as he considers himself ugly, but Kolya replies in his mother’s words, “There are no ugly boys, there are just uncut boys.” As a result, the wizard accepts the invitation and becomes an ordinary child.

What did the censors consider sedition? The fact is that Lyamzi-Tyri-Bondi was actually a homeless child and, as you know, there could not be such children in the USSR.

This musical cartoon was shot in 1973 by young directors Marianna Novoprudskaya and Idea Garanina. The musical series was very innovative for its time and close to rock, and the screenwriter built the plot around the fight of animals with the tyrant-tiger Mustachioed-Striped, forbidding them to sing and play music. Alas, not long before, Sergey Lapin, chairman of the State Committee for Radio and Television Broadcasting, banned the broadcast of “pop” music on television, and therefore the animated fairy tale was considered a criticism of a senior official.

This Soviet cartoon tells the story of Mr. Boa constrictor, who promised all the poor hares seven new skins, but instead fed them to the wolves. The strip ridiculed the “Marshall Plan” – America’s proposed 1947 program to rebuild Europe after World War II. It would seem that what could be more ideologically correct? However, the censors announced that the authors of the cartoon “took the path of gross distortion and popularization of the important political theme of the film, the reactionary imperialist politics” and banned the broadcast of “Ambulance” to the screen.