Ukrainian Publishers Now Beating Russian Ones in Bringing Out Translations of Books from the West, Vivat Head Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 2 – Since 2014, there have been remarkable changes in the book publishing industry in Ukraine, Yuliya Orlova, publisher of Kharikiv’s Vivat House says. It is now bringing out translations of books from the West more rapidly than are Russian ones and overwhelmingly publishing only in the Ukrainian language.

            Those encouraging developments, Orlova tells Censor.net, are unfortunately balanced by other less positive ones, including a decline in size of print runs by about 25 percent, widespread piracy and contraband, and the lack of a stable system of supporting library collections (censor.net.ua/resonance/3081409/bylo_voodushevlenie_posle_vvedeniya_litsenzirovaniya_rossiyiskih_knig_no_izza_piratstva_i_kontrabandy).

            The Ukrainian government’s support for Ukrainian language has played an enormous role in the positive side of the ledger, the publisher says. Before 2014, publishers in Russia bought up rights for Ukrainian as well as Russian translations but then did not publish in Ukrainian.

            Now, that has changed, Ukrainian publishers are more active in international deals and insist on buying the Ukrainian rights, something that has helped ensure that books are translated and published in Ukrainian as is now the case.  But prices remain too high relative to income and print runs too low – 4,000 on average compared to 10,000 in Germany and 3,000 in Latvia.

            Another major change is that Ukrainian houses now publish as many as 95 percent of the titles on their lists only in Ukrainian. Before 2014, most published far more in Russian. Government policy has promoted this, but so too have reader interests. Russian-language books now sell much less well than they did, Orlova says.

            She gives as an example a new book by Mustafa Dzhemilyev. The Ukrainian language version quickly sold old, but stocks of the Russian-language one, despite expectations that Crimean Tatars would prefer a Russian version, remain unsold.

            Another case involves the works of Nobel laureate Svetlana Aleksiyevich. Her books have been translated into Ukrainian and are selling well, despite suggestions by some that they should be issued in the original Russian. 

            At the same time, Orlova says, “we have not ceased issuing books in Russian, but the print runs and assortment of books has been cut back.”

За последние 2-3 года спрос на нон-фикшн книги вырос в несколько раз. Читателя стали больше интересовать практические советы специалистов, книги по саморазвитию и мотивации.

Moscow Plans to Divide Its Pseudo-Cossacks into Five Districts to Monitor Population and Counter Dissent

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 2 – In yet another step that sets Vladimir Putin’s pseudo-Cossacks apart from genuine Cossack communities, the state-backed Council of Atamans of Russia has announced plans to divide the country into five “Cossack districts,” each of which will create a power vertical including a counter-intelligence function.

            Gennady Kovalyev, a general in the Federal Counter-Intelligence Service and deputy head of the Council of Atamans of Russia, says that in order to preserve “the state order,” the Cossacks will be divided into five corps districts,” each with a counter-intelligence staff (zavtra.ru/blogs/zachem_nuzhna_kazach_ya_kontrrazvedka_segodnya).

            The general adds that these staffs “will exercise control over the political attitudes of the population,” an indication of the real way that the Kremlin intends to use its own Cossacks and one that sets them apart from traditional Cossacks who are divided into more than a dozen hosts and typically unwilling to be used against the political opposition.

            According to Kovalev, a staff will be set up attached to the Council of Atamans which will oversee the activity of the entire counter-intelligence staffs at the district level. “Strict vertical subordination will be established,” and the corps counter-intelligence staffs will be responsible for reporting on all their activities and their monitoring of the population.

            “On the basis of that,” Kovalyev says, “we will carry out analysis and generalization of reports about the political situation in the regions and monitor information about subversive activity of opponents of the Cossacks in the Internet.” The network of its agents will reach “into the smallest Cossack units.”

So far, the Cossack counter-intelligence operation has been gathering two kinds of materials: documents compiled on the basis of political monitoring and case records about “persons identified as being active in anti-government and anti-Cossack activity and propaganda.”

These staffs, the general continues, will also monitor both relations between Cossacks and the local population and efforts by Cossack units not under its control who seek to compromise the Cossacks that are officially registered and seek to fulfill their patriot duty of supporting the state.

Kovalyev’s brief remarks suggest that Putin’s pseudo-Cossacks are going to go over to the offensive against traditional Cossacks, demanding that the latter either conform to the Kremlin’s definition of Cossackry or disband, something many will be unwilling to do. And that in turn may lead to clashes, especially in the southern regions of the country. 

Deaths Outnumber Births in Pskov Oblast Three to One, Making Funerals Only Growth Industry

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 1 – Pskov Oblast, on the western edge of the Russian Federation adjoining adjoins Belarus, Estonia and Latvia, is dying out faster than any other Russian region, with deaths this year three times more numerous than births. Indeed, it has been referred to since the 1990s as “the capital of Russian depopulation.”

            In the current issue of Sobesednik, journalist Olga Kuznetsova reports that not only villages are dying out, leaving on the names, but so too are ancient and famous cities like Pskov and Velikiye Luki (sobesednik.ru/obshchestvo/20180830-pohoronnoe-byuro-vmesto-magazina-kak-vymirayut-goroda-rossii).

                The death of the oblast began after the war, local people say, when recruiters from neighboring Baltic republics came and offered higher-paying jobs than the local agricultural economy could.  But the decline has accelerated because of extreme poverty: there are few cars and housing projects. Instead, people travel on horseback from one wooden house to another. 

            The only “growth” industry is in funeral services. Most people die before they reach 60, never seeing a pension. And their numbers are large. This year, so far, 49 have died in a single small town. Last year, 70; and the year before, 100. But this decline reflects the fact that the town has declined in population by 3500 people over this period.

            Increasingly people are dying in their 40s and early 50s, local people say, often from heart disease and cancer. In the 1990s, even more died: the population was larger and many people had motorcycles and died in accidents.  In one year, residents recall, 400 people from the town died that way. 

            Lev Shlosberg, the head of the Pskov regional branch of Yabloko, says that all this reflects the fact that Pskov oblast doesn’t have its own economic base. As a result, 20 percent of its people are below the poverty line, “eat bad products and purchase cheap medicines. They have no money to support themselves at a normal level.”

            “More than 60 percent of the deaths are from circulatory and heart diseases,” but “the region doesn’t have a development strategy. And without a correct policy for redistributing federal funds it is impossible to change everything.” He notes that since 2011, Pskov oblast has been in “last place” among Russian regions in terms of government spending per capita.