Theatrical art had a significant influence on the formation of social and cultural space of the city at all times. Currently Khabarovsk is one of the theatrical art centres in the Russian Far East. In this regional center theaters of different genres and periods exist. To study the Khabarovsk puppet theater is relevant because of growing interest of viewers of different ages to its activity, as well as the increasing role of the theater in the cultural and social development of the Far Eastern region. The puppet theater was created and later revived in the period of social modernization of the 1920s and 1990s. The paper attempts to identify the causes of the popularization of puppet theaters in certain historical periods. The peculiarities of a puppet genre can be explained by the Russian Far East situation at that time that created the appearance of the city puppeteers in the theatrical space whose work accumulated all the best traditions of Russian and the world puppet genre. Archive documentation analysis allowed creating a holistic view of the puppet theater major directions in the period of radical transformation of the 1990s.