Authors

Discussion

This paper presents a case study of the earliest Soviet translations and later revised editions of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, which remain largely unexamined. It traces how translation quality transformed from the 1920s to the 1970s and 1980s—a period when Soviet-style norms were increasingly imposed on Ukrainian literature, especially in translation.

The first complete Ukrainian translation of Gulliver’s Travels was produced in 1928 by Mykola Ivanov, a prolific translator of Spanish, English, French, and German literature. Several editions appeared under varied titles and formats during his lifetime, including Mandry Huliverovi (1928), Podorozhi Hullivera (1935), Hulliver u liliputiv (1937), and Mandry do riznykh dalekykh krain svitu Lemiuela Hullivera (1935).

Ivanov’s 1928 translation coincided with the release of the Kharkiv Ukrainian Orthography—Skrypnykivka—the first standardized spelling system for Ukrainian in the Soviet Union. His title and vocabulary choices reflect its emphasis on distinctly Ukrainian forms over Russian-influenced ones. By 1933, however, Soviet authorities condemned the orthography as “nationalistic,” replacing it with norms that aligned Ukrainian more closely with Russian. Later editions, such as the 1935 children’s version, adopted these changes.

Despite this shift, Ivanov’s 1935 full translation retained the spirit of the 1920s cultural revival, with vivid conversational tones and uniquely Ukrainian lexicon, such as zhupan, kamizelka, haman, zavhrubshky, uroztyazh. After World War II, Ivanov became an Orwellian “non-person,” excluded from official records and denied rehabilitation even during the Khrushchev Thaw. To reprint his translation, Soviet publishers credited Yuri Lisniak as the translator in the 1976 and 1983 editions, though Lisniak had only edited Ivanov’s original to meet contemporary language standards and censorship constraints. Ivanov’s name was officially restored only after Ukraine’s independence in 1991, though Lisniak’s attribution remained on later reprints of the 1983 edition.

Lisniak, who translated nearly a hundred works by Western authors, is widely regarded as one of the most influential Ukrainian translators of the Soviet period. Compared to Ivanov’s 1935 full translation, Lisniak’s version reflects the more polished, literary style of 1970s Ukrainian, marked by reduced natural intonation and spontaneity. Many Ukrainian words and grammatical constructions were also modified to resemble Russian usage. The Soviet imprint is discernible even in Lisniak’s accomplished work: a language distanced from lived experience, depersonalized and subdued. Despite his efforts to resist these effects, traces of diminished linguistic vitality and censorship—both of expression and the human body—persist.