The politics of literal translation in Soviet Ukraine

Abstract

Nikolai Gogol (Ukrainian: Mykola Hoholʹ) is a notable example of a nineteenth-century Russian author of Ukrainian origin, whose works in Ukrainian translation have always been and now remain ideologically fraught. This article discusses the dynamics of translation – from creative stylization to awkward literalism – during the period from the late 1920s to the early 1950s. Later Ukrainian editions of Gogol’s works in the Ukrainian SSR were not substantially different from those published in the mid-1950s, which indicates that by that time the Soviet model of Ukrainian literary language had been firmly established. It tended to increasingly merge with Russian, taking the Russian-language writings of Gogol as a model. The study reveals a tension between Ukrainian national idealism and the Soviet regime’s pragmatic use of language as a means of political propaganda. The discussion further challenges Russian-to-Ukrainian literalism as a strategy for manufacturing linguistic similarities and “naturalizing” Russian as the mother tongue.