This was a real pain to translate, but I think it's worth it - it's a very enjoyable film. The art style strongly reminded me Andrey Svislotskiy's 1992 Hypnerotomachia (even a bit of the animation is copied), and indeed, the same art director, Yevgeniy Sheshenin, worked on both films, and Svislotskiy was an animator on this one. But the animator.ru credits for this film are very incomplete and neither are credited.

Neither are they listed in the English subtitles (because there are song lyrics that need translating), so I'm going to list the credits in this comment, just so they exist somewhere online:
Director & screenplay - Vladimir Samsonov
Art director - Yevgeniy Sheshenin
Composer - Anatoliy Kiselev
Lyrics - Leonid Derbenev
Vocalists - Pavel Smeyan & Lyubov Privina
Instrumental Ensemble "Dobry Molodtsy"
Camera - Ernst Gaman
Sound - N. Kudrina
Director's assistants - Z. Kredushinskaya, A. Grishanova
Art director assistant - A. Tsybin
Backgrounds - L. Yanelis
Animators - A. Kolkov, N. Bazeltseva, A. Svislotskiy, Ye. Delyusin, D. Naumov, Yu. Andreyev, I. Gundyreva, A. Yurkovskaya, M. Zaytsev, V. Barbe
Montage - L. Ruban
Script editor - A. Feodoridi
Production director - Lidiya Varentsova

I think this one is very mediocre, unfortunately - uninspired and unoriginal art direction, a silly script, a "Ded Moroz" who is too much like the Western Santa Claus, weak characters. Which surprises me, as it comes from the director of the really well-done "Wolf and Seven Little Goats" of only two years before.

>>1
I suppose Mr. Icon wanted to publicly thank his wife. That's a fair point, I think that line should probably be moved to the end. It's distracting to have messages from the translator before the film is over.

A more serious problem that I didn't notice until now is that the subs become out of sync not long into the film... I've now corrected it, but the final values I ended up with are really weird (0.998 and 0.999 multipliers for the English and Russian subs).

The first time I watched this, I didn't realize the likely reason that Alyosha's parents are always "too busy" to take him to visit his grandma...

Wait, why does at line 418 the English subs says:

>(The fansubber wants to thank his most amazing wife!)

I think this is probably one of the weaker films of the first batch of "Mountain of Gems" shorts. Even the other film from the same year by the same two directors feels a lot more alive. The art style isn't too appealing, and the script isn't all that interesting overall, despite being fun in spots. Though Tatarskiy is listed as director, it doesn't feel like he was really able to devote a lot of energy to this one.

Also, like Valentin Telegin's other films, this one feels "Eastern" - nothing wrong with that, but it feels wrong in a Belorussian story.

>>1
I think the character design is a dead giveaway. :) Cherkasskiy was the only one who drew characters like that, as far as I know. He seems to have had surprisingly few imitators, given the popularity of his films.

I just noticed this was directed by the same guy behind Treasure Island and Adventures of Captain Wrongel.

Some of the animation occasionally reminds me of earlier Tatarskiy films from the late 1980s and 1990s, especially the elephant (who looks just like his elephant from the Pilot Brothers).

I find it interesting to compare this one to Galina Barinova's 1981 Cat Catafeyevich, the same story but told rather differently (with more pathos and somewhat less slapstick). I think both of them are excellent films, with different strengths.