Up until the 1980s, the largest overseas market for Indian films was the Soviet Union. After "Dharti Ke Lal", the first Indian film to become a blockbuster at the Soviet box office was "Awaara" (1951), directed by Raj Kapoor and written by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, released in the Soviet Union in 1954. Indian films had the strongest presence in the Soviet foreign blockbuster charts for four decades. 300 Indian films were released in the Soviet Union, most of which were Bollywood films. Among the foreign films that sold more than 20 million tickets in the Soviet Union, 50 were Indian films, the highest from any nation, compared to 41 Hollywood films. Indian films were routinely released with hundreds of prints in the Soviet Union, with the most popular Indian films releasing with more than a thousand prints there. The highest-grossing Indian film in the Soviet Union was "Disco Dancer" (1982), written by Rahi Masoom Raza and starring actor Mithun Chakraborty. In terms of footfalls, the only Indian films estimated to have sold 100million tickets overseas were "Awaara" and "Disco Dancer" in the Soviet Union. Indian films were very popular in Russia at the time, routinely opening to packed houses. However, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, bringing an end to Indian cinema's largest overseas market at the time. The decline of Russian cinema in the post-Soviet era led to Indian films largely disappearing from Russian cinemas by the mid-1990s.