Ruvim Kachanov was born in 1921 in Smolensk. His father Abel was a cobbler. As a child, he changed his first name to Roman.
Roman received his schooling in his native city, and also attended an arts studio at the local Palace of Young Pioneers. In 1939, he was drafted into the Red Army, and became a cadet of the Krasnodar Flight School. In 1940, during a training flight, Roman's airplane crashed, and the captain was killed. Roman was brought to a hospital with multiple wounds. His father and sister came to visit him there, and this was the last time he would ever see them: The two would perish in the Smolensk Ghetto under the Nazi occupation.
In the spring of 1941, Roman Kachanov enrolled in the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers, but was prevented from studying there by the outbreak of the Soviet-German War. He was sent to serve in a parachute unit based in the Moscow region.
In the course of the war, Roman Kachanov served as a parachuting instructor in a special motorized rifle brigade. He took part in special sabotage operations in the German rear.
In 1945, as the war was drawing to a close, Roman began to study at the Department of Cinematography of the Research and Development Institute of the Red Army Air Force (the present-day Chkalov Flight Test Center of the Russian Ministry of Defense). At this time, he was introduced to the art of animation, which would become his life's work.
Sometime later, Roman Kachanov completed the Moscow Animation Courses at the Soyuzmultfilm studio.
For the next decade (1947-1957), Kachanov worked as an animator, art director, and assistant to numerous prominent Soviet directors. In 1958, he began to work on three-dimensional puppet animation at Soyuzmultfilm. At this time, he also made his directorial debut (in collaboration with Anatoly Karanovich): the puppet film The Old Man and the Crane.
In 1967, Kachanov's animated film The Mitten won international acclaim, receiving the Annecy International Animation Film Festival Award. It was the first Soviet puppet movie to achieve recognition abroad. All in all, Kachanov took part in the creation of more than sixty films – as director, screenwriter, and animator.
Kachanov's most renowned works are the series of animated films based on Eduard Uspensky's children's books: Crocodile Gena (1969), Cheburashka (1971), Shapoklyak (1974), and Cheburashka Goes to School (1983). He received the USSR State Prize for the film The Mystery of the Third Planet (1981). His works won numerous awards at various film festivals, both at home and abroad.
Kachanov also taught at the higher directors' courses at the Mosfilm studio.
Roman Kachanov died in Moscow in 1993.
