‘Vavila the Terrible’ is a muzhik who beats his wife, ‘Auntie’ Arina, and demands his meal of shchi and kacha (soup and porridge). When he and his friend realise that the women have not only stopped their domestic work to celebrate 8 March but that they also want to pursue education at the workers’ school, these two men understand that they are in big trouble. This short agitfilm created in celebration of the International Working Women’s Day brought together four pioneers of Soviet animation: Nikolai Khodataev and his sister Olga, and the Brumberg sisters, Valentina and Zinaida. The two heroines resemble those in Barnet’s film Dom na Trubnoy (The House on Trubnaya) – the naive Vera Maretskaya with her round face and the militant Ada Vojtsik with her kerchief –, which was produced in the same year by the same studio, Mezhrabpomfilm, the animated film however taking place in the countryside.

Irène Bonnaud and Bernard Eisenschitz