Timur i yego komanda
(1940)

AKA: Timur and His Squad

Country: Soviet Union

Genre: Family Adventure

Synopsis

A gang of village boys led by young Timur sneak around secretly doing good deeds, helping families of Red Army officers and soldiers, supporting elders and small children, and fighting off a gang of hooligans.

Notes

• Based on the 1940 novel of the same name by Arkady Gaidar, who also wrote the screenplay for the movie.
• The novel on which this film was based gave rise to the Timurite movement, a youth volunteering movement which became a massive phenomenon all over the Soviet Union. The 'Timurites', as they were called, emulated the activities of Timur in the novel and the movie, by performing good deeds for their communities. The novel 'Timur and His Squad' remained part of the curriculum in every Soviet school up to the 1990s. Timurite movements were also established in the GDR (German Democratic Republic), Poland, Bulgaria, Czechoslavakia and North Vietnam. More recently, Timurite movements have been revived in the post-Soviet states of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
• A sequel to this movie, Klyatva Timura (1942), brought the story up to date by involving Timur and his squad in the war effort, following the invasion of Russia by German-Nazi forces. Both the movie screenplay, and the associated novel, were once again written by Arkady Gaidar, and the role of Timur in the movie was again played by Liviy Shchipachyov.