Russians Get Misty for 1980 Olympic Mascot Misha---Except for His Creator

Feb. 20, 2014 7:57 p.m. ET

The mascot of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow was Misha the bear, still fondly remembered by Russians today. A marvel of Olympic marketing, the chubby iconic bear was designed by Viktor Chizhikov. WSJ’s Lukas Alpert reports.

MOSCOW—The most enduring memory many Russians have of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow has nothing to do with international boycotts or the fact that the Soviet Union won the most medals in Olympics history that year. Ask a Russian about Misha, and a nostalgic tear might come to his eye.
The smiling, chubby cartoon bear known as Mikhail Potapych Toptygin, or Misha, was the official mascot of the 1980 Games and lives on today as a potent cultural icon in Russia. A standard image on souvenir T-shirts and coffee mugs, it was a masterstroke of Olympics merchandising, made more remarkable because of its skillful execution by Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet government.
With the Winter Games in Sochi drawing to a close, loving memories of Misha are being stirred anew as Russians fondly recall the indelible image of a giant balloon version of the bear floating away from the 1980 closing ceremony. But for the man who created Misha, it is a sore point.

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“I hate to talk about mascots,” says Viktor Chizhikov, a renowned children’s artist whose design was picked in 1977 from more than 40,000 submissions. “This is like a thorn in my heel,” he says.
Mr. Chizhikov’s bitterness stems from his belief that the state reneged on a promise to grant him the copyright to his bear, which means he never saw a kopeck from the stuffed toys and porcelain dolls that were sold during the Games, nor from cartoon programs that were later produced. Now 78 years old, he still fumes every time he sees a Misha T-shirt.
“In the end they told me, ‘The Soviet people were the creators,’ ” he says. “I did 90% of the propaganda for those Olympics. This was the face of the country.”
But Olympics officials say that the idea that Mr. Chizhikov would have ended up with the rights to the design is doubtful at best.
“In accordance with the Olympic Charter, after Dec. 31 of the year in which the Olympic Games had been held, all the rights to the intellectual property and the symbols of the Olympics go the International Olympic Committee,” says Viktor Beryozov, deputy head of the legal department of Russia’s Olympic Committee.

He said he has no idea what Mr. Chizhikov was promised, as most officials who were around in 1977 have died.
“As far as I know, he probably received some kind of remuneration for his work based on the laws and the agreement he signed at the time,” Mr. Beryozov says. “Besides, Mr. Chizhikov has gone to court over the Olympic Misha copyright multiple times and lost.”
Mr. Chizhikov says he received just 2,000 rubles ($1,600 in 1977, or a payment that would be worth about $6,150 today) for his work. In 2008, he filed a lawsuit against a Russian television station for broadcasting a program in which an inflatable Misha flew around the country visiting Russians from all walks of life (including strippers and convicts), but lost because he couldn’t prove he owned the rights.

Artist Viktor Chizhikov, who created Misha for the 1980 Games, in his Moscow studio this month. Lukas I. Alpert/The Wall Street Journal

His indignation emerged again when the organizers of the closing ceremony in Sochi approached him for help. He angrily refused.
Andrei Boltenko, the 46-year-old creative director of this year’s opening ceremony, whose company helped design the mascots for the Sochi Games, says he was disappointed because he remembered how much the bear meant to him as a child.
“It was a symbol of the country, it had soul,” he says, recalling sitting on his father’s shoulders and crying as Misha flew away at the end of the 1980 Games. “When you look at that, you instinctively understand that it comes from the Soviet Union.”
Konstantin Ernst, the 52-year-old head of Russia’s state-run Channel One and director of the Sochi Games’ opening and closing ceremonies, has hinted that some kind of homage to Misha is planned for the final event but is vague about what.
“In the memory of anyone who lived in the Soviet Union, this image [of the bear floating away] was imprinted forever,” he says.
Mr. Chizhikov is dismissive about the three Sochi mascots—a polar bear, a leopard and a hare—saying they lack personality. He has particular scorn for the bear, which is named Mishka and—as the story goes—is Misha’s grandson.

“When your idea is stolen, how can you like it?” he says. “The smile, the eyes, the nose were all stolen from my bear. They just pumped him up and made him fatter.”
While Mr. Chizhikov has had enduring success as an illustrator, his drawing of Misha remains his most famous work. The walls of his central Moscow studio are lined with portraits of the bear, and he speaks wistfully of how the idea came to life. The bear’s smiling face and stocky body came quickly, he said, but it took months to make it Olympic—something he ultimately accomplished by adding a weightlifter’s belt, with the buckle made up of the Olympic rings.
“I started in May, but it wasn’t until August that the belt came to me in a dream. I immediately jumped out of bed and drew it on him,” he says.
The design was among 60 finalists. He was later told by the IOC that it had been selected without much deliberation by the late Lord Killanin, who headed the IOC from 1972 until 1980. He took one look at it and said, “yes, that’s the one,” and then left for a meeting.
Misha wasn’t the first Olympic mascot, but his use for mass branding set a trend for Games to come.
“They used the image well. They had it in many forms and the idea for this mascot spoke to people,” says Anthony Bijkerk, of the International Society of Olympic Historians.
But he says it should come as no surprise that the Soviet Union was skilled at marketing.
“They had a lot of experience through their propaganda campaigns of using imagery well to convey ideas,” he says.
Write to Lukas I. Alpert at lukas.alpert@wsj.com

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