The History of Russian animation is the film art produced by Russian animation makers. As most of Russia's production of animation for film|cinema and television were created during Soviet times, it may also be referred to some extent as the History of Soviet animation. It remains nearly unexplored field for in the film theory and history outside Russia.

The first animator in Russia was Aleksander Shiryayev, who was a principal dancer at the Imperial Russian Ballet, as well as a teacher and choreographer. He made a number of pioneering puppet-animated ballet films between 1906 and 1909. He only showed them to a few people, and they were forgotten until their re-discovery in 1995.

The second person in Russia to independently discover animation was Ladislas Starevich, who was of Polish descent and is therefore also known by the name of Wladyslaw Starewicz. Being a trained biologist, he started to make animation with embalmed insects for educational purposes, but soon realized the possibilities of his medium to become one of the undisputed masters of stop motion later in his life. His first few films, made in 1910, were dark comedies on the family lives of cockroaches, and were so revolutionary that they earned Starevich a decoration from the Tsar. Starevich's 41-minute 1913 film The Night Before Christmas was the first example of the use of stop motion and live action in the same scene.

Ilya Muromets (Russian: Илья́ Му́ромец; Ukrainian: Ілля́ Му́ромець, literally Elijah of Murom) is a Kievan Rus' epic hero. He is celebrated in numerous byliny (folk epic poems). Along with Dobrynya Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich he is regarded as the greatest of all the legendary bogatyrs (i.e., medieval knights-errant of Kievan Rus). (The three of them are represented together in Vasnetsov's famous painting Warriors, as illustrated below.)

Although Ilya's adventures are mostly a matter of epic fiction, he is believed to have been an historical person: a 12th century warrior and, in older age^{[clarification needed]}, a monk named Ilya Pechorsky. Ilya is beatified as a minor Saint of the Orthodox Church. His relics are preserved in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra.

According to legends, Ilya, the son of a farmer, was born in the village of Karacharovo, near Murom. He suffered serious illness in his youth and was unable to walk until the age of 33 (till then he could only lie on a Russian oven), when he was miraculously healed by two pilgrims. He was then given super-human strength by a dying knight, Svyatogor, and set out to liberate the city of Kiev from Idolishche to serve Prince Vladimir the Fair Sun (Vladimir Krasnoye Solnyshko). Along the way he single-handedly defended the city of Chernigov from nomadic invasion (possibly by Polovtsi) and was offered knighthood by the local ruler, but Ilya declined to stay. In the forests of Bryansk he then killed the forest-dwelling monster Nightingale the Robber (Solovei-Razboinik), who could murder travellers with his powerful whistle.