The first Russian animator and supposedly the father of Russian stop motion (as he developed this before Ladislas Starvich) was a man called Alexander Shiryaev. He was a professional dancer, a teacher and choreographer. He liked to use animation as a tool to teach dance techniques, for example "The Nutcracker". He used the tedious frame by frame method to document the moves of the dances between 1906 and 1909.
Ladislas Starevich
"The Night Before Christmas"
Starevich was a trained biologist and initially used animation for educational purposes. He soon saw the potential with animation after he used stop motion techniques to recreate the fighting ritual of stag beetles, as they don't move when light shines upon them, hence making it impossible to film. This led to the making of "Battle of the Stag Beetle" (1910); an animation that changed his life forever. As he began to create more animations, he ditched reality and started to anthropomorphise his characters. He also mixed stop motion and live action together, "The Night Before Christmas" (1913) being an example of this. He's considered another father of stop motion animation. His influence is so great, it can still be felt in today's modern classics, such as Tim Burtons "A Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993), created 80 years after Starevich's original.
Russian animation soon came to a standstill for years after the October Revolution that happened in 1917. Animation only started to creep back when Soviet authorities were convinced to finance experimental studios around the mid 1920s. These studios were relatively large and usually produced animated clips for propaganda purposes. Being quite large studios, it allowed animators to be more experimental. People like Mikhail Tsekhanovsky made their debut films in a new and interesting way, artistically different to American animators.
Mikhail Tsekhanovsky
Screen shot from the film "Post Office"
Tsekhanovsky was an illustrator and painter who created "Pochta" (1929) (also known as Post Office), an important animation of the era. for Russia. The film is based on a children's book by Samuel Marshak. It's about postmen and the global movement of letters. Post Office became known as an early masterpiece and received world wide praise, with architect Frank Lloyd apparently showing it to Walt Disney. After receiving such praise for his personal style, he was forced, along with other soviet animators, to animate in a more bland commercial form. This restriction of artistic freedom lasted for 25 years after the formation of Soyuzmutfilm Studio, which happened soon after Disney's Mickey Mouse shorts were unveiled at the Moscow Film Festival in 1934. Soon after that screening, a group of writers and government officials made a new rule in the direction of "Soviet Realism", which meant pro-soviet children's films based on fairy tales and traditional stories. They were made with the approved method of cel animation using Éclair, which was the Russian equivalent of rotoscoping.In 1964 when the government controls were relaxing, Russian animators could finally express themselves individually again. Tsekhanovsky remade "Post Office" shortly before his death.