Volume 10, Number 1, 2023

EN:

Contemporary research increasingly recognizes the role of community archives in preserving evidence of the pasts of identity groups, validating their historical experience, and thus furthering the goals of social justice and equality. Such values underlie the Association of Ukrainians in Victoria (Australia) Archival Project, which the present article places into the broader context of Ukrainian community archival collections in the state of Victoria. Data obtained through interview have enabled a descriptive survey of such collections, which are found to be concentrated in a handful of “archival clusters” in suburban Melbourne and regional Victoria. The most typical contents of the collections—records of the proceedings and activities of community secular and religious organizations—reflect the dominant role in the community’s life of organizations established by post-World War II immigrants. The collections constitute a rich resource for research into the part of the community encompassed by these organizations, even if, as a rule, at least at present, they are not well ordered or described. They are less revealing of the experience of immigrants who arrived later or were less inclined to join community organizations. Lack of resources, both human and material, confronts the mainly volunteer officeholders who are responsible for the organizations’ archives. In consequence, collections are often inadequately and sometimes unsafely housed, and in general only informally organized; finding aids or descriptions of them are seldom available. Initiatives taken by some organizations suggest that there is growing awareness among community activists of the potential value of archives for showing and interpreting the community to itself and to others.

EN:

This essay examines the history of the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre (UCRDC) in Toronto, looking at how the tragedy of the Holodomor led Ukrainian-Canadians to come together in speaking out against the Soviet regime and equally, reaffirming Ukrainian nationality on the world stage. It also examines how the UCRDC evolved from mainly studying the Holodomor to exploring other topics of interest to Ukrainians worldwide. Through filmmaking, archival development, and publications, the UCRDC has worked in ensuring that the voices of Ukraine and Ukrainians be heard.

EN:

This paper examines the media systems in the “Donetsk People’s Republic” and the “Luhansk People’s Republic,” both unrecognized states. After a conflict outbreak in 2014, the media landscape in the unrecognized republics acquired the features of an authoritarian media system. Employing qualitative methods (primary source analysis and in-depth interviews), the research explores a combination of instruments that pushed media into an authoritarian mode that entailed declarations of loyalty, severe vertical subordination, predominantly state ownership, and the designation of a military subdivision at the information frontline. Other decisive factors that allowed an authoritarian media system to be instated are the loyalty of the pre-existing media landscape to local authorities and oligarch media owners, the political isolation of the unrecognized republics, and the strong influence of the Russian information space.

EN:

This article elucidates the reconstruction of the Soviet security apparatus during World War II in what today is western Ukraine. In late 1943 to early 1944, six operational groups of the People’s Commissariat of State Security of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic headed to the Axis occupied territories with orders to re-establish contacts with Soviet secret agents and create a support infrastructure for the deployment of other operational groups, special purposes units, and individual agents, as well as to infiltrate organizations of Polish and Ukrainian nationalists. The essay examines Soviet special operations within the context of state efforts to project power into the Axis occupied territories. It sheds light on the objectives of Soviet security agencies and on the activities of individual units in the field.

EN:

The Soviet totalitarian regime not only violated human rights, it pursued an aggressive policy of assimilation, seeking Russian cultural and linguistic hegemony over all Soviet republics. Literary translation was no longer viewed as an apolitical activity and became an ideological weapon and an efficient “means of forced cultural change” (Monticelli). Regime ideologues sought control over both the selection of “reliable” authors / texts for translation and the ways in which these texts were interpreted in the target languages. This policy led to the appearance of massive translations from Russian literature and a widespread practice of indirect translations, with Russian intermediary texts as a criterion of fidelity. In Soviet Ukraine, however, this Russification policy went further and targeted the Ukrainian language itself; this resulted in the lexicographical deactivation of many authentic Ukrainian words and their substitution with Russian counterparts. Extensive repressive practices and tight ideological constraints gave rise to translators’ activism and cultural resistance and inspired translators to take on new roles. The case of Mykola Lukash (1919–88), whose name went down in the history of Ukrainian translation as a symbol of resistance, illustrates some of the social roles performed by translators to resist Russification. Lukash’s actions as translation gatekeeper, cultural custodian, and language guardian exemplified the importance of personal agency and a firm occupational identity for translators who opposed assimilation.

EN:

The paper focuses on the medieval period of the history of liturgical translation in Ukraine and Poland. In the ninth century, the evangelizing mission of SS Cyril and Methodius brought Christian translations to the east of what was then Europe. Although religious translations were not cherished in Moravia and Poland, they flourished in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Ukraine. The Roman corpus of liturgical texts existed only in Latin, and socio-political conditions stimulated the emergence of translations from Latin to Polish. The Byzantine corpus was introduced in Old Church Slavonic, which was understood by and accepted among Slavs. Different nations modified these texts according to their local visions and the necessities of their churches. Poland’s and Ukraine’s liturgical praxis under the aegis of the Roman and Byzantine Mother-Churches defined the shaping of different corpora of liturgical books, but the quality of translations was high in all Slavonic translations. The (typically) negatively judged strategy of literalism prepared a foundation for lingual experimentation in semantic expression and helped to spread the local melodies of liturgical tradition. The Church Slavonic language gave a more fruitful impetus to the development of early Ukrainian literature than the Latin language provided to early Polish literature. In fact, the Latin language restrained a similar development of early Polish literature for two centuries.