Ever heard of Comrade Bilbo Baggins? Prepare to have your kind blown.
I’d never heard of this, but apparently, the Soviet Union made a low-budget children’s version of The Hobbit in 1985, a few years before the Berlin Wall fell. Huffpost described the project as “cheap and delightful,” and after sampling it, we have to agree:
This is a heartfelt romp obviously made for little ones, and the brutally outdated sets and effects are actually endearing. We’re not sure how much Soviet state propaganda and censorship is heaped into the narrative, but considering the source, some distinct level of influence seems likely.
Filmed in 1984 from a loose Russian translation of the book by Vladimir Latyshev, the TV production aired on the Leningrad TV Channel through the late 1980s and 90s. It’s a colorful, lighthearted take on the story, with actor Zinovy Gerdt portraying “The Professor” (a version of Tolkien-as-narrator). The production employs puppets and dancers from the Leningrad State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater alongside more traditional actors.
Tolkien had long had an underground popularity in the Soviet Union, but the first effort to officially publish The Lord of the Rings in the 1960s suffered from severe editing required by government literary censorship. The Soviet hierarchy feared elements of the trilogy posed an ideological danger with its “hidden allegory of the conflict between the individualist West and the totalitarian, Communist East,” at least according to a study cited by Wikipedia. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, large numbers of Russian translations were generated in response to demand among fans.
Getting ahold of an English subtitled version of this movie might be difficult, but apparently fansubs do exist. Otherwise, keep your English-Russian dictionary handy.
We have no idea what author J.R.R. Tolkien might think of this odd take on his famous 1937 novel. He appears to have had a pretty harsh anti-socialist bent, having criticized “the kind of hard socialism that he had witnessed in the Soviet Union.” So maybe he wouldn’t have been too pleased with this bouncy 1985 pre-Glasnost version.
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