Musical Representations of the Past in Children’s Cartoons Produced in Central-Eastern Europe under Communism

The subject of this article are the composition strategies employed to represent the past in animated films produced in the integrated cultural space which Central-Eastern Europe constituted during the communist era. Productions made in two countries, the Soviet Union and in Poland, have been considered. Film examples have been discussed in approximate chronological order, according to the time of production of individual cartoons. By selecting specific movies I do not intend exhaustively to analyse these audio-visual works. I have limited myself to reviewing thematic threads related to the past and, in this context, ideas and tendencies in film music composition.