In fact most of Russia's production of animation for cinema and television was created during Soviet times. The first mid-to-late-1920s experimental studios produced short animated clips for propaganda purposes

The Soviet Union's first feature-length animated film, The New Gulliver (1935), based on Jonathan Swift's novel and produced by Aleksandr Ptushko. This film mixes puppet animation and live acting.

In 1935, the Soyuzdetmultfilm-Studio was created and Socialist realism became the leading direction. It focus on the creation of Disney-style animation, exclusively using cel technique in hand-drawn animation.

It became the leading animation studio in the Soviet Union, producing an ever-growing number of children's and educational animation shorts and features. However directors like Ivan Ivanov-Vano with 1954's Moydodyr or Lev Atamanov with The Snow Queen (1957, told after Hans Christian Andersen's tale) managed to create masterpieces of their genre that have been rewarded various prizes at festivals all over the world and have taken a lasting place in animation history.

With the Khrushchev Thaw the new tendencies in animation emerged. A number of young animation directors appeared that in the following years developed their own distinctive styles and approaches. Anatoly Petrov is known as the founder of the cinema journal Vesyolaya Karusel (The Happy Merry-Go-Round, since 1969) that gave an opportunity to many young directors to make their first own films.

The 1970s saw the birth of the Soviet Union's most popular animation series, "Nu, Pogodi!" (Just you wait!), directed by Vyacheslav Kotyonochkin. These seemingly simple miniatures about a wolf chasing a hare through soviet-style cartoon worlds owe a great deal of their popularity to the cunning subtexts built into their parts.

In 1953 was a puppet division, that had come to a halt. During the Stalin period was refounded at Soyuzmultfilm. Roman Kachanov made numerous films for children, starting from puppet animation (Varezhka (1967), Cheburashka series), and later with traditional animation (The Mystery of the Third Planet, 1981).

One of the most famous Russian animators is Yuriy Norshteyn. His films "Little Hedgehog in the Fog" ("Ezhik v Tumane") (1975) and "Tale of Tales" ("Skazka Skazok") (1979) show not only technical mastery (although not smooth animation), but also an unrivalled magic beauty. "Tale of Tales" was elected best animation film of all time during the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles, and again in 2002.

After the end of the Soviet Union, the situation for Russian animators changed dramatically. On one hand, State subsidies diminished significantly. On the other hand, the number of studios competing for that amount of money rose a good deal. Most of the studios during the 1990s lived on animation for advertisement and on doing commissioned works for big studios from America and elsewhere.

Nevertheless, there were a few very successful international co-productions, e.g. Aleksandr Petrov's (former Sverdlovsk Film Studio animator) Oscar-winning The Old Man and the Sea (1999, from Ernest Hemingway's novel) or Stanislav Sokolov's The Winter's Tale (1999, from William Shakespeare's play) that earned the director an Emmy.

During the last decade a number of feature-length animation films from Russian studios have emerged: "Little Longnose" ("Karlik Nos"), 2003, from Wilhelm Hauff's fairy tale, 2006 "Prince Vladimir" ("Knyaz Vladimir"), 2006 based on early history of Rus', the collection of cartoons "Mountain of Gems" ("Gora Samotsvetov"), based on fairy tales of different peoples living in Russian Federation. "Mountain of Gems" is considered the major and most difficult project in Russian animation. Its production started in 2004 and is still in action.

Zhikharka by Natalia Golovanova - a part of the "Mount of Gems" collection. (Award for the best children's animated of the 2008 Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film)

Russian TV series "Masha and the Bear by cartoonist Oleg Uzhinov is 2009-2010 highlight and the participant of The Annecy International Animation Festival 2010.

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"Mountain of Gems" series