The “Disney Boom” in the Perestroika Period: Mechanisms and Conductors of Cultural Transfer

The results of a study on the Disney cultural transfer (by Michel Espagne), which became possible in the perestroika-era USSR after a long period of silence and criticism that began in the 1950s, are given. It presents the societal changes that caused it, what were the conductors and mechanisms, and the reaction of Soviet citizens to them. The article is part of the research field of media and film development during perestroika and continues the problematics stated by Valerie Posner in “Disney in the Land of Soviets, 1930s”. However, it uses a new methodological framework (the concept of cultural transfer) to study perestroika changes in the USSR media space. The study analyses three main “transfer points” that stand out against the background of the general flow of Western (Disney) media in 1987—1991 by their intensity and scale of reaction: 1) the Disney film The Journey of Natty Gunn (directed by Jeremy Kagan, 1985) wins a prize in the children’s programme of the 15th Moscow International Film Festival 1987; 2) the Walt Disney Film Festival in Moscow 1988; 3) the mass distribution of Disney products in the USSR 1989—1991. An analysis of archival festival documents and newspapers, interviews and LiveJournal entries revealed a number of mechanisms of cultural transfer, which this study refers to as the “Disney boom”: 1) the festival; 2) discourse in the media; 3) the distribution of Disney “artefacts”. The conductors of cultural transfer were identified: cartoonists, film critics, film industry workers, as well as Goskino, Gosteleradiofond, Sovinterfest, Physical Culture and Sport publishing house, and Walt Disney Pictures film studio. It is proved that the “Disney boom” of perestroika was not an introduction of something radically new into Soviet culture, but a reactualization of the transfer of the first half of the 20th century.