Moscow hasn’t Published Russian Translations of Tatar Writers Since Putin Came to Power, Khamidullin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 5 – The Soviet authorities routinely published the works of non-Russian writers in Russian translation as a way of integrating them into Soviet culture. (For the best discussion of this phenomenon, see Anthony Olcott’s 1989 study, Non-Russian Writers of Russian Literature, at ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1989-802-16-Olcott.pdf.)

            The Soviets clearly hoped that many of the non-Russians whose works were translated into Russian would eventually write in that language and that their readers would make a similar linguistic migration, something that in fact happened; and they were already ready to point to this practice as evidence of the communist system’s solicitude to non-Russians.

            But since 1991, this practice has lapsed. While Moscow does translate a few writers from the numerically smallest nationalities for obvious propaganda purposes, it does not choose to subsidize and the market does not make possible the translation of non-Russian writers who would have been routinely translated in the past.

            And while there are no statistics available on this issue, it appears likely that the larger the non-Russian nationality in question, the fewer such translations into Russian there have been. Indeed, according to senior Tatar writer Liron Khamidullin, “Moscow hasn’t published Tatar writers in Russian for 20 years” (business-gazeta.ru/article/467286).

            The author says that the state of literature in Tatarstan is “fine,” but there are real problems of getting it translated into other languages and “especially into Russian.” He says he worked in the apparatus of Tatarstan’s Union of Writers for 16 years in the 1970s and 1980s and that Kazan typically recommended to Moscow that five or six books be translated.

            They almost always were and this brought broader attention to Tatar literature, Khamidullin continues. Now such connections with Moscow or the capitals of independent states like Kazakhstan have almost completely broken although there are occasional success stories.

            An even bigger tragedy, one that began at the end of the 1950s has been the decline in the knowledge of the titular languages of the non-Russian republics. Much of the reason for that was until recently the closing of schools for members of a nationality outside the borders of the republic where that nation is the titular one and its language official.

            Now Moscow is pressing to close such schools within the republics as well. “We need our own national schools even if they have to charge tuition.”  Without a national language, the nations will not survive, Khamidullin says.  And literature in these languages can ensure their survival at more than the kitchen level.

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