Victor Morozov of Ne Zhurys fame continues to promote the Ukrainian language


by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - When Ukraine's popular bard Victor Morozov was performing with the Ne Zhurys (Don't Worry) ensemble in the waning years of the Soviet Union, one of the many songs in their repertoire that must have given Gorbachev's "glasnost" censors heartburn was "Viddaite Movu" (Give Us Back Our Language).

The song's refrain demanded the return of the Ukrainian language, long suppressed in favor of Russian under Soviet rule, to its rightful place in Ukraine.

That was in 1989. After independence, Ukrainian became the official language of Ukraine, but few would maintain today that the battle has been won. Russian continues to dominate in the country's media, cinema and book publishing, and in just about everything in the eastern and southern regions of the country.

Five years ago, Victor (he uses the Anglicized spelling) Morozov rejoined this fight. This time not with his voice and guitar, however, but with a computer and his knowledge of English, which had been his major in Lviv University many years ago. He began translating popular children's literature into Ukrainian and getting Ukrainian children hooked on reading in their mother tongue.

Run-of-the-mill children's books wouldn't achieve much, of course, but J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series certainly would. And it did. In a country where a Ukrainian-language book selling 5,000 copies is considered a bestseller, Mr. Morozov's translations of the first five Harry Potter books together have sold 300,000.

It wasn't easy at first, he admits, but the series has taken on a life of its own, and the youngsters' appetite for the next book, while maybe not as exaggerated as it is in the West, is astonishing and growing.

Mr. Morozov still performs - he appeared at the Shevchenko monument rally during the Washington visit by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in April and just last Sunday was scheduled to sing at the annual Lviv city festival - but his translations now demand equal, if not more, of his time.

He talked about his life as a singer and translator in an interview for The Ukrainian Weekly while visiting Washington.

The idea of translating the Harry Potter books into Ukrainian came to him when he was in Canada in 2000 and witnessed first-hand the Harry Potter mania in the West. At that time, he said, there were precious few books being published in Ukrainian that children found interesting. A Ukrainian Harry Potter, he thought, would do it.

His initial plan was to produce a Ukrainian translation before the Russian version was published, so that even in the Russian-speaking eastern areas of Ukraine, children would demand to read it.

Unfortunately, it took a whole year to get a publisher (A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA) and still another year to lock in translation rights. By that time, the first four books had already been published in English and in Russian. "So we had to play catch-up," he said, and it paid off.

He published the first four and, as the fifth book, "Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix," was about to come out, he isolated himself from all interruptions and distractions, and completed the translation of the 800-page tome in less than two months.

It was the first translation of the book in Europe, which was an honor, he said, but, better still, it beat the Russian translation by three months. "And that was very important, because when the children in Ukraine began looking in earnest for a translation, they were able to get their hands on the Ukrainian and not the Russian version."

Furthermore, he added, it helped in the sale of the previous editions of his Potter translations. Many children, including those in central and eastern Ukraine, liked his fifth translation so much that they wanted to read his previous Potter volumes.

"It may not have been a huge victory, but it was a victory for the Ukrainian language nonetheless," he said.

He credits the Harry Potter series for raising the interest of children in reading books, after years of being distracted by computer games and television.

"Without a doubt, Harry Potter is the most popular book among children," he said. "Despite its length and lack of illustrations, they read it and they can't wait for the next installment to come out."

And that will be in mid-July. So now he is preparing to go into seclusion once again in order to get that translation out in record time.

"When my friends ask me now if I plan to beat the Russians again, I tell them - jokingly, of course - that this time we want to beat out the original English."

He expects the first printing of the next Potter book to be, like the previous volume, around 60,000 copies.

Unlike the Russian Harry Potter translation effort which last year used three translators, Mr. Morozov works alone. He tried sharing the work with another top-notch translator in an earlier edition, but that resulted in more work in the editing phase in order to blend the two translations into a unified whole.

His publisher, A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA, is considered the leader in high-quality children's literature. Established in the early 1990s by poet Ivan Malkovych, it was the first private publishing house in Ukraine.

If the Harry Potter project is not enough work for Mr. Morozov for the next few months, he found for himself another book project which is due at about the same time. The film, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," based on the children's classic by Roald Dahl, is also due to be released in mid-July. Even though Ukrainian children will probably see the movie dubbed in Russian, as is the normal practice in Ukraine, thanks to Mr. Morozov and his publisher, if they then would like to read the book, it will be ready for them - in Ukrainian.

Mr. Morozov does not limit his translating work to children's books. Indeed, before taking on Harry Potter, he translated three books by Paulo Coelho and one by Benedict Anderson.

During the interview in Washington, Mr. Morozov also described those heady pre-independence years of performing with Ne Zhurys.

The problems were immense, he said. The Communist Party was still in charge, the KGB was keeping a close watch on everything. The programs of all concerts had to be approved by official censors. "And we started singing songs about Soviet stereotypes, about Kaganovich, among other things." Their director, Ostap Fedoryshyn, was constantly being summoned to party headquarters, where they would veto some of the things they planned to perform.

"Still, there was this opening, similar, in a way, to what we went through and felt recently with the Orange Revolution," Mr. Morozov said. "There was new energy coming up from within; one could feel that it was a time of change. At the same time there was an insecure feeling, because we didn't know how all of this would end."

Mr. Morozov said that people would tell them, "Guys, what are you doing? They can put you away." And they very well could have, he said, because the old "structures" were still there.

"But we went ahead anyway, sensing that great changes were coming, and we knew that a good way to rid the people of their fear was through satire, jokes and laughter," he said.

"Maybe that's why Ne Zhurys became so popular then. The people could shed their shells of fear at our performances," Mr. Morozov noted.

Being a satirical cabaret theater, a genre with historical roots in Lviv, Ne Zhurys was unique in Ukraine. But in other parts of the country, as well as in Lviv, much of that kind of work was also carried on by the "bards," the poets-composer-performers, such as Mr. Morozov, Eduard Drach, the composer of "Viddaite movu" who hailed from Kryvyi Rih, Marichka Burmaka in Kharkiv, the kobzar Vasyl Zhdankin and others.

"It was, so to speak, a musical form of journalism. All one needed was a guitar and a newly written song which could be performed immediately, without any special arrangement."

He said that this musical form was widespread and popular then "probably because the people were looking for the truth at a time when lies permeated their society, and only the bards could provide them with the satire or historical songs long forbidden by the regime."

All this was pre-independence, Mr. Morozov said. After independence, the cabaret and bard musical forms went into a decline, "as did most everything else."

After independence, there were high hopes that life would quickly change for the better and that Ukraine would flourish - politically, economically, culturally. "But, after the initial burst of energy, crises would come up," he said. "First it was economic, and then everything else went downhill."

"Pessimism set in and it affected most everything, including the bard movement and groups like Ne Zhurys. The people had had enough of satire; they became more interested in survival," he pointed out.

Recalling those years as he looks at the euphoria, new energy and hopes born in the recent Orange Revolution, Mr. Morozov said he hopes that, this time, the people will not be disappointed.


Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, May 15, 2005, No. 20, Vol. LXXIII


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