Oleksandr Kalnychenko , Lada Kolomiyets

Theory and practice of translation in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Soviet Ukraine, 1920s–1930s.

Introduction

Theory and practice of translation in the humanities and social sciences in soviet ukraine, 1920s–1930s. . Explore non-fiction translation in Soviet Ukraine (1920s-30s). Uncover ideological control, censorship, and the impact of political shifts on terminology & scholarly connections.

Abstract

The translation of non-fiction prose in the humanities and social sciences, despite its significance, long remained on the periphery of translation studies discourse. In Soviet Ukraine during the 1920s–1930s, this process was complicated by the ideological pressure of the Marxist-Leninist paradigm and the transition from Ukrainization (1923–1929) to Stalinist Russification and censorship. Unlike fiction, translation in the humanities and social sciences demanded exceptional terminological precision and was fully subordinated to ideological requirements. The purpose of the article is to examine the emergence and development of non-fiction prose translation in the humanities and social sciences of Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s–1930s within the context of political and linguistic transformations. The research methods are based on Anthony Pym’s “archaeology of translation”: a manual bibliographical reconstruction of the corpus from library catalogs and archives (since no systematic lists exist), supplemented by comparative and terminological analysis. The main findings indicate that Oleksandr Finkel’s monograph Theory and Practice of Translation (1929) was a pioneering work regarding non-fiction translation in the USSR and became institutionalized at the Kyiv Institute of Linguistic Education. In the 1920s, hundreds of direct translations from German, French, and English were produced in pedagogy, psychology, philosophy, and Marxism. From the early 1930s onward, direct translation was gradually replaced by Russian-mediated versions, while censorship intensified. The 1933 resolutions of Narkomos and the 1933–1934 campaign against “nationalistic translator-saboteurs” led to the russification of terminology and widespread repressions. The conclusions highlight the evolution of translation in the humanities and social sciences—from an intellectual breakthrough of the Ukrainization era to totalitarian control. Despite the losses, translational activity in this field laid the foundations for connections with global scholarly thought. The study reveals the mechanisms of subordinating language to ideology, mechanisms that remain relevant to the contemporary decolonization of Ukrainian science.

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