The Fascinating History of Soviet Lord of the Rings

It has been more than a month now since my article, Tolkien in Adaptation: A Turbulent History, was published. Hours after it went live, I was informed of the existence of another adaptation that I had somehow missed in my research. Khraniteli, which translates to “Keepers” or “Guardians” of the Ring. A Soviet adaptation of Lord of the Rings. Within an hour I had found the entire thing on YouTube with English subs and was all set to watch it. I was told that it gets weird. I was not disappointed.

I was transfixed as Gandalf opened his very much not grey robes to reveal clipart of fireworks and as an actor dressed like a cross between Robin Hood and Peter Pan put a ring on his finger and vanished, took it off again and reappeared as a cabbage headed Gollum. It got more and more bizarre as it went on. There was no Balrog, I simply looked away from the screen for a moment to see what my dog wanted and Gandalf had somehow just disappeared in Moria. At the same time, this is, to my knowledge, the only adaptation that isn’t a radio drama or audiobook that includes Tom Bombadil and Goldberry. It definitely got very weird, and yet it also had moments so faithful that it was clear to me that at least one person responsible had a love for the source material and deeply cared. I needed to know more about this, and about the Soviet Hobbit adaptation that I discovered through my research. So, for the past month or so, I have been on a deep dive down the rabbit hole to see just how and why this fascinating adaption came to be.

Tolkien was largely censored, if not outright banned, in the USSR for a long time, seemingly for a few reasons. Evil was always in the East (Smaug in The Hobbit, Mordor in Lord of the Rings), the translator for the Swedish version outright claimed that Sauron was an allegory for Stalin (prompting Tolkien’s forward in later printings where he outright states to loathe allegories), and then right when Fellowship had finally been published in the USSR, albeit abridged and heavily censored, Ronald Reagan made his “evil empire” speech and all further translations were self-published illegally. It is unclear to me what the status on The Hobbit was, with one source I found referring to the 1976 translated version used as a source for the Russian stage play “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” (or “The Fantastic Journey of Mister Bilbo Baggins” according to another source) as ‘prohibited’, while another article says that a publishing house was “given the official go-ahead to publish Natalia Rakhmanova’s complete translation.” The film version has text at the beginning stating that it is based on the official translation, however, the Variety article is the only one I’ve found in my own research stating that the copy used for the play was prohibited.

Anyway, the official translation of The Hobbit was, of course, edited for censorship purposes, because East evil West good and this was the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The publishing house that released this translation of The Hobbit in 1976, Detskaya Literatura, would later be the same publishing house that managed to publish the first state-sanctioned translation of Lord of the Rings in 1982. Illegally translated versions had been circulated via samizdat (underground press) beginning in 1966, including Zenaida Bobyr’s very re-written sci-fi version, but this was the first official Russian translation in the nearly 30 years since Fellowship was first published. It was a translation of The Fellowship of the Ring which was titled Khraniteli, or The Keepers (or Protectors, depending on article and translation, though most say Keepers). This translation, by Vladimir Murav’ev and Andrej Kistyakovskij, would be the basis for the television special that sent me down this rabbit hole. However, not long after it was published, Reagan made that aforementioned speech and translations of the following titles, The Two Towers and Return of the King, never followed despite the popularity of the translation of Fellowship.

During this time, the stage adaptation of The Hobbit continued on, apparently running for long enough that the actor who played Gollum played the role for ten years. The stage show was filmed for television in 1985, and until 2021, was believed to be the only film adaptation of Tolkien’s work from the Soviet Union.

The Hobbit film is only about an hour, and begins with a narrator sitting alone at a table telling the story, and it regularly cuts back to him. Due to only being a little over an hour, a lot has been cut out. Elrond, the trolls, Beorn, and the elves of Mirkwood are all missing. The songs are all done very well, with the goblins and the people of Lake Town being portrayed by dancers from the Leningrad State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre. The brevity and the cuts result in some weird transitions and changes. The magic swords from the trolls seem to come from Bilbo dreaming of the trolls (who are never seen, simply mentioned by the narrator talking about Bilbo’s dream), the narrator is used to transition fight scenes, the dwarves still complain about Bilbo even though we are never shown a reason for them to think he’s bad at being a burglar only for that point to be immediately dropped; we go straight from this series of complaints and Bilbo reappearing to the spiders attacking, and the narrator cuts from Bilbo taunting the spiders straight to the dwarves and Bilbo arriving in Lake Town. The content that wasn’t cut is quite book-accurate, with many lines seeming to be straight from the book (assuming subtitles are accurate as I do not know any Russian).

It is a truly unique viewing experience, and I fully recommend checking it out for yourself. It is available on YouTube with English subtitles.

So, as stated before, this seemed to be the only known Soviet adaptation of Tolkien’s work until 2021. This changed when Khraniteli was suddenly posted to YouTube by 5TV, the successor to Leningrad Television, who first aired the almost entirely lost special. Its original air date was April 13th, 1991, only about 8 months before the collapse of the Soviet Union in December of that year.

As stated in my introductory paragraphs, this adaptation of Lord of the Rings is truly bizarre to watch today, so far removed from its original context. Similarly to the Soviet adaptation of The Hobbit, some parts are missing, a narrator is present, costuming doesn’t always line up with lines that are spoken (if subtitles can be trusted), most notably Goldberry wearing red and orange while being described as wearing green and silver, and yet what is kept in is almost entirely accurate, with perhaps some minor changes. For example, Farmer Maggot has almost the exact same role in the book as he does in Khraniteli, though he is changed from a farmer to an innkeeper. Based on what I’ve learned about production, it was likely far easier to have him portrayed that way in their adaptation.

The production, so far as I can tell, was a complete mess and entirely a labor of love. While The Hobbit was basically a filmed version of the play, based on everything I’ve been able to find, Khraniteli was thrown together in about a week. The Variety article I linked earlier includes quotes from some of the actors, as they managed to get an interview with them. Based on their descriptions, filming was maybe a total of 9 hours over one week, done for essentially free in between the actors’ day jobs. Props, sets, and costumes were thrown together using whatever was available in the studio. No balrog? Probably no costume or prop they could use. Conversely, the scene where Gandalf rides to freedom on an eagle becomes all the more impressive with that context. Goldberry’s costume not matching the line? Still questioning why they kept the line the same, but that was probably the only costume they had for her. To me, it sounds reminiscent of my drama classes in high school, and several of my courses while studying theatre in university, which adds to the charm.

There were very few retakes, so it’s understandable that there are moments where some of the actors look like they don’t want to be there. Likely, they were tired, or possibly confused due to rehearsing for maybe half an hour beforehand. I’m sure I had several performances in classes where I looked the same because of similar circumstances.

To me, this adaptation is truly a unique and important one. It is not only an adaptation of Tolkien, but a stunning example of how much can be accomplished by people with limited resources who truly care about the project that they’re working on. Only Fellowship of the Ring was adapted. Whether that is due solely to the Soviet collapse or there were never plans to adapt the other two, I can’t say, but part of me truly wishes we could have seen what they could have done with the rest of the material.

This adaptation is absolutely one that I will rewatch, probably several times. Everything about it is charming, from the music to the effects to the ballet dancers in Lothlorien. If you have the time, I fully recommend giving it a watch. It is available on YouTube with English subtitles, part one is here.

For more information on the translations and publishing history, my sources are here and here. My additional sources on the adaptation beyond the Variety article are here and here, with a little help from Wikipedia as well on both Khraniteli and The Hobbit.