Bears were traditionally tamed in our country. Now, however, animal rights activists are very much in the way.
In the old days, peasants of some certain regions went to fairs with them, bears showed different things - how children steal peas, how a drunken peasant dances, how a soldier marches with a gun. They all returned home for the winter.
During the Crimean War, British and French prisoners were sent to the deep provinces for maintenance. Noble officers were admitted to local noble assemblies, and participated in political discussions. They argued that the government would not be able to maintain the required size of the army, since it was forced to keep troops on all borders. And so a local official (police chief) in one of the districts of the Nizhny Novgorod province told them that they were wrong, because they did not know everything, and invited them to the outskirts of the city the next day. He himself ordered all the owners of tame bears to gather there with their pets. The next morning, the French saw several hundred bears in a large field, engaged in drill with mock guns. The police chief explained that there would be no shortage of recruits.
Then this story about the "mobilization of bears" served as a source of more or less witty cartoons, I saw them, but now I have not found them.