Misha the Bear – the Mascot of the 1980 Moscow Oympics
Written by Vadim on November 17, 2008 – 8:27 pm -
The 1980 Moscow Olympics took place during the peak of the Cold War. Following the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, most of the Western hemisphere chose to boycott the games. 80 Nations competed all up – 1/3 less than in the Munich Olympics in 1972
The games however did produce two lasting legacies – the unofficial theme song “Moscow” by the German disco band Dschinghis Khan, and the official Olympic mascot “Misha”, the bear cub (also known as “Mischka”).
In Russian, ‘Misha’ and ‘Mischka’ are the diminutive forms of the Russian male name ‘Mikhail’, the equivalent of ‘Michael’ in English. The bear is also an animal that traditionally used to symbolise Russia and the Soviet Union, much like the Bald Eagle is used in the USA.
Misha was designed by Victor Chizhnikov – a renowned Russian Children’s book illustrator. In 1977, the committee organizing the Olympics held a contest for the best illustration of a bear. The judges chose Victor Chizhikov’s design depicting a smiling bear cub wearing a blue-black-yellow-green-red (colors of the Olympic rings) belt, with a golden buckle shaped like the five rings. Misha was confirmed as an official mascot on December 19th, 1977.
Misha is the first mascot of a sporting event to achieve large-scale commercial success as merchandise. The Misha doll was used extensively during the opening and closing ceremonies, had a TV animated cartoon and appeared on several merchandise products. Misha also appeared in the 1980 Olympics episode of the Russian cartoon Nu, pogodi!, handing trophies to the Wolf and the Hare.
Due to the success of Misha, sporting mascots have assumed a prominent role in all Olympic Games following 1980 and have even been introduced into other sporting competitions like the FIFA world cup.
Here is a video excerpt from the 1980 Moscow Olympics closing ceremony showing a large inflatable Misha Bear being released into the sky. The music playing is “Goodbye, Moscow”, created by Nikolai Dobronravov and Aleksandra Pakhmutova.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misha
http://olympic-museum.de/mascot/mascot1980.htm
Russian site dedicated to the Moscow Olympics
Translation of closing ceremony song “Goodbye, Moscow” into English
Tags: misha, moscow olympics, olympic games, toys
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Russian Toys in My Childhood
Written by Vadim on September 24, 2008 – 6:01 pm -I was raised in Australia, but my parents came from the Soviet Union in the early 70’s. When I was 3 years old, my grandmother moved to Australia to join our family after her husband died.
She wanted her grandchildren to have exposure to Russian Culture. She used to read to me from Russian Childrens books. I could not read the Cyrillic script, but I enjoyed looking at all the pictures, which were hand-drawn in such great detail and with a distinctive style, unlike the comics I had and the Saturday Morning cartoons I used to watch on TV.
My favourite was a red wooden doll. Only recently, did I discover that the proper name is a Matryoshka doll. I always felt intrigured when I pulled the torso off to find another identical figure, just a bit smaller. There were six in total, and it was slightly disappointing to me that the smallest could not be opened up to reveal anything more. I may have spent hours compulsively opening the dolls and putting them back together – lining up my ‘army’ of six, then turning them back into one. I guess in many ways they are comparable to Transformers – “They’re more than meets the eye”.
Tags: dolls, matryoshka doll, toys
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