[1][2][3] Olga Khodataeva was born in the Konstantinovskaya stanitsa (modern-day Konstantinovsk, Rostov Oblast of Russia), one of the three children of a tsarist official Peter Petrovich Khodataev.
[1][4] In 1924 her brother along with the fellow artists Yuri Merkulov and Zenon Komissarenko organized an experimental workshop under the State School of Cinematography, the first Soviet animation studio where they produced a cutout short Interplanetary Revolution.
Soon they were hired by the Soviet government to create an animated feature film China in Flames to support the Chinese national liberation movement.
[7] From then on Khodataeva directed and co-directed around 30 animated films mostly based on traditional Slavic fairy tales and folklore of the Indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East.
Among those few left in the sieged city were Olga Khodataeva and Leonid Amalrik who produced several anti-Hitler sketches that were released under the Kino-Circus name in 1942 to a great acclaim.