Humanities and social sciences translation in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s–1930s
Humanities and social sciences translation in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s–1930s

Summary/Abstract: This study explores the translation of humanities and social sciences texts in Ukraine during the 1920s–1930s, a time of cultural and political shifts. The Soviet Ukrainization policy (1923–1929) drove a surge in translations of scholarly works in pedagogy, psychology, philosophy, and Marxist theory from German, French, and English. Scholars like Oleksandr Finkel, Mykola Zerov, and Mykhailo Kalynovych developed advanced translation theory, with Finkel’s Teoriia i praktyka perekladu (Theory and practice of translation, 1929) emphasizing genre-specific strategies for non-literary prose. The early 1930s reversal of Ukrainization and Stalinist Russification suppressed Ukrainian linguistic autonomy, imposing Russian intermediary translations and branding translators as “nationalist saboteurs”. Despite the repression, these translations enriched Ukrainian intellectual life, even as political terror erased many works from history. Funded by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan of the Slovak Republic under Project No. 09I03-03-V01-00148. Funded by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies (Sweden) as part of the project “De/colonizing Ukraine: Practices of Russification and Modes of Resistance 1922–1991” under Project No. 24-PR2-0020.

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