The "thaw" on "Soyuzmultfilm": broadening of the studio's theme range and role of animation in the ideological education of Soviet people after the 20th CPSU congress

The article is devoted to the broadening of Soyuzmultfilm’s theme range during the Khrushchev Thaw. Changes in the studio repertoire are taken as a manifestation of the USSR culture politics of the period for the first time. A number of case studies are analyzed: motives of creation, administrative and authors’ revisions, as well as searching for new artistic devices to get the cartoon's idea better. New themes emerging in this period and ideological tasks to which they were assigned are considered. The data sources include (apart from the cartoons) unpublished shorthand reports of the studio art council preserved in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) in Moscow, and discussion about objectives of Soviet animation that took place in columns of «Art of Cinema» (Iskusstvo kino) magazine in 1961-1964. As a result, certain shifts in the studio repertoire during the Thaw are found. The studio started production of satiric animated films for adults. Soviet satire was aimed at raising the population against social problems. The main themes of satiric cartoons were bureaucracy («Once upon a time there lived Kozyavin / Zhil-byl Kozyavin», «A landing place / Tikhaya pristan», «Bath-house / Banya»), low conduct («A story of a crime / Istoriya odnogo prestupleniya») and unsatisfoctory service («In a canteen / V odnoy stolovoy»). Some attempts were made to provide people with information about the governmental actions in the sphere of national economy. But such films, with the exception of a corn-promoting prop film «Wonder-maker / Chudesnitsa», had no success. New cartoons about the Revolution and The Civil War addressed chiefly to new generation of children. The animations could interlace seamlessly fantasy into historic reality, creating a romanticized image of the events. In sum, since the end of the 1950s, the soviet animation has been turning from a children admonitory and entertaining art into a means of ideological education of the audience.