Antoshka

Generations of Soviet and Russian children have laughed at Antoshka, and the joke still lands. The others keep calling him out to work — Antoshka, Antoshka, let’s go dig potatoes! — and he keeps slipping the summons with the perfect schoolboy’s excuse: we haven’t covered that, it wasn’t set for us. The catch, of course, is that when a giant spoon comes out and it is time to eat, Antoshka is first in line. It is a warm, knowing little portrait of every child who is tireless at play and mysteriously exhausted by chores.

The song comes from Soviet animation’s golden age. It featured in 1969 in the very first issue of Vesyolaya Karusel (“Merry-Go-Round”), an anthology of short cartoons from the famed Soyuzmultfilm studio, in a segment directed by Leonid Nosyrev — who added the sunflower and the rook from his own childhood memories. The music is by Vladimir Shainsky, one of the most beloved of all Soviet children’s composers, and the words by Yuri Entin, who later called Antoshka the most popular character he ever wrote. The nonsense refrain — tili-tili, trali-vali — is half the fun, a lazy sing-song lilt that fits its hero perfectly.