Following an interesting fortnight on the Friends of Plastic Warrior Faceplant page, in which mostly Polish-produced stuff has been the center of attention, there was a sort of side-bar, which went-off to look at Russian flats at one point, in the course of which I found two pages which seem to reveal someone who could be considered as important to Soviet-era toy soldier production as say our own George Musgrave or the Scandinavian Holgar Eriksson.
This is not to ignore any or all the other well-known sculptor's, of which there are lots now known, we've already looked at another Russian one (Lev Razumovsky) here but to compare him with two who were A) prolific and B) left their mark on the products of many brands. And I must credit Wojciech Gudaczewski with pointing me toward the two pages, by mentioning Mr Savelyev in the first place.
The first link is an article on a recent (2016) exhibition on the great artist's work juxtaposed with the modelling-clay efforts of a young man - Ilya Barkov - who is obviously (one hopes) going to go far himself!
Original article (in Russian) is here . . .
https://sh-rikm.mo.muzkult.ru/news/12156600
. . . and translates thus;
"News
06/09/2016 The works of the oldest toy sculptor in Russia are presented at the exhibition "My Collection" in the Shakhovskoy Museum.
The exhibition "My Collection" has started in the Shakhovsky Museum.
The exhibition features collections of two masters: the novice Ilya Barkov and the oldest toy sculptor of modern Russia, Boris Dmitrievich Savelyev.
Ilya Barkov is a 13-year-old schoolboy from the village of Dubranivka. He makes his soldiers from plasticine. In 2014, his panorama “The Battle of Stalingrad” won first place in the “Modeling. Embossed Modeling "in the category" 10-12 years "at the regional exhibition-show of arts and crafts" Craftsmanship and Inspiration ".
Now Ilya has presented 35 of his works, including: French and Russian soldiers of the Napoleonic Wars era, Soviet soldiers during the Great Patriotic War, medieval warriors, as well as an Afghan war veteran and two characters from the Stalker game.
Boris Dmitrievich Savelyev during his life created hundreds of models of soldiers (and not only them), which were issued in millions of copies, and became known not only throughout the Soviet Union, but also in other countries.
The toys created by Boris Dmitrievich were produced at the mechanical clockwork toy factory (Moscow), the Ostashevskaya toy factory, the Malysh factory, and the Astretsovskaya factory of metal products. Perhaps the most famous items of the master are the sets of soldiers "Cavalry" (six red cavalrymen and a tachanka), "Warriors of the Middle Ages" (four Russian horsemen and four Teutonic knights), "Horsemen of 1812" (17 different figures of Russian and French cavalry).
Now the soldiers B.D. Savelyeva launches the URA! Brand
On June 14, Boris Dmitrievich Savelyev will turn 88 years old. The exhibition "My Collection" is timed to this date.
See the work of B.D. Savelyev and Ilya Barkov are available until August 12, 2016.
In preparing the material, the article by Timur Zamilov “The oldest Russian master. To the 85th anniversary of Boris Dmitrievich Savelyev "// Old Tseikhgauz.- 2014.- №1 (57). - S. 93-96."
Original article (also in Russian) is here . . .
. . . and translates thus;
"Boris Dmitrievich Savelyev. Toy soldiers
Labuda
History
1
581
In memory of the master of our childhood. Boris Dmitrievich Savelyev. He died on August 30, 2019. He was 91 years old ...
Boris Dmitrievich Savelyev.
I guess many older and middle-aged people are familiar with these figures? With them passed our childhood (and not only ours), with them we had our first combat experience in battles on the carpet, in the sandbox or on the school window sill.
What is a soldier? This is a tiny visualization of history and our understanding of it. Small plastic and zinc-aluminum symbol. Whether it was successfully implemented by the heavy Soviet industry or not, we understood this much later, growing up. But when we were five years old, these were our fighters and they fought and died bravely.
It seems to me that this familiar one, "Cavalry", "Red Cavalry", more rare "Warriors of the Soviet Army", "Warriors of the Middle Ages" are very successful fighters.
As experts of soldier construction rightly point out, this is a real “patriarch of Soviet toys and soldiers”.
I admit that I am not an expert in toy soldiers at all, but I appreciate excellent authors of all genres. It was thought that finding out the name of this well-known and unknown person to all of us would be interesting to many former children of the USSR, well, to the envious young generation.
Unfortunately, everything related to the production of soldiers and the legendary personalities of the world of soldier building is more like rumors and myths. As far as it was possible to find out, Boris Dmitrievich, until very recently, continued to do his wonderful work and new fighters came out of his hands, produced in small editions of a firm known to collectors.
Undoubtedly, Boris Mikhailovich Savelyev is a part of our history.
Source: tt-762.livejournal.com"
The second one is a Blog and there is other useful toy soldier stuff on there but I found it hard to navigate around and some of it seems to be composed of dead-links or dead image files, despite being quite recent, so some reblogging going on I think, my Russian is non-existent!
For Polish speakers, he can also be written - Borys Dymytrowicz Sawlejew.
Also you will see from the links he is credited with the figures we looked at the other day, courtesy of Chris Smith and there's two more poses and another colour!
Six days later; and it's nice to see that TJF was paying attention - he'd be lost for ideas without me!
May 2021; The figures used to illustrate the above are now recognized as the output of Malysh, one of the Moscow toy collective factories!
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