Сampaigning against the «nationalistic wrecking» in translations in Ukraine in 1933-35

The study deals with the Soviet translation policy into Ukrainian in 1933-35, when a gradual shift in official judgments on translation took place and a new function of translations, the one connected with nationalities policy, emerged, as translations became considered an instrument of consolidation of the Soviet Union republics around Russia. Stalinist regime has been shown to have attempted to openly regulate literary expression in translated books, including not only the textual choices and source language, but even the translation methods. The study describes a unique for the XX century Europe campaign in press against “the nationalistic wrecking” in translation incriminating the translators a nationalistic distortion and counterrevolutionary actions toward separating the Ukrainian language from Russian (and not at all inaccuracy of translation!).which triggered plentiful relay translations as well as retranslations and revisions to near the texts to Russian. Five condemning publications against “wreckers” in translation of both political literature (“distortions” of Lenin’s works in the translations edited by Scrypnyk) and fiction (“distortions of Maхim Gorky works and of Sholokhov’s Virgin Soil Upturned in Ukrainian translations), as a part of the campaigning accessible to the observer. The campaign has been displayed to have triggered plentiful retranslations and revisions to near the texts to Russian. Their vocabularies were purged of “archaisms,” or words harkening back to national history, and “alien” elements (e.g., the vocabulary of Polish or Czech origin), and the prohibited words and other elements were replaced by “internationalist” ones (Russian-derived modern vocabulary and grammar constructions borrowed from Russian).