were thrown, it was clear that we have two awards, and on march 9 of last year , volodymyr oleksandrovich zelenskyi convened a meeting of cultural figures, with all of sinclit, which means that the head of sori's office administration and the minister of culture were also there. there were 20 people on this holiday and saints , yes, in the operating room of the president's office, finally i joined, and there were many people on the video call, and there was a proposal that we should give a special award - additional nominations for contributing to the victory . and then just then

now it doesn’t sound so sharp anymore, but back then there were a lot of such manifestations, when cultural diplomacy, in its pure form , cultural diplomacy, when the mere presence of our artists on international platforms, influenced public opinion and , accordingly, literally helped ukraine from the west, i can cite as an example when... the kyiv kyiv symphony orchestra played at the summit of nato heads of state, played berezovsky and skoryk, and it was so obvious, you see, here, well, here is the point where destinies are decided of the world, and they play directly in front of these people. the ukrainian collective

of ukrainian composers is standing there, boris johnson is jumping up, macron is standing there, sticking in and enjoying it, and when it was heard, i said, come on, why not , did it actually come out of the mouth of the minister of culture , tkachenko, or did it come out of the mouth of the director of the odessa opera and the minister picked up on it. and i, in turn, picked up, well, i ’m called, how to put it so delicately, simple-minded, i, and in this way, and in this way it gave arguments, so to those people who always suspected, yes, that is, this inertia of suspicion about the shevchenkivskyi committee, yes, it worked here, and you immediately began to suspect that you were working with the authorities, the authorities, yes, and i, of course, that i was for... and

the main thing what was delayed in connection with this was delayed by me, and i did not have the opportunity to consult with my colleagues, i later realized that there was a certain combination, it was not for nothing that this proposal was made, but it was not for nothing that oleksandr tkachenko picked it up, well, that is, but... i am all these combinations, i do not buy them, nor in live broadcast, no, i picked her up because she seemed right to me, but in fact it was wrong, and when my colleagues leaned and ka and began to say that from the committee, yes, and there all the people are very difficult and very independent , and it is simply impossible to put pressure on them, that's all.

i repeat, i repeat many times, these are very decent people with bad characters in the best sense of the word with reputations, they said, no, this is wrong, because we are undermining the trust in the award, which is already very weak in the society, and here is my question , or is it on yours opinion, in fact, this is the fate of these state awards, which will always be, will always be... arguments of people who suspect, there will always be these suspicions, or if you had not made this mistake, and the award would have remained reputationally intact beyond suspicion and it would have functioned properly, because the previous awards, what the heck, i was there in the previous composition under the chairmanship of yuri mykolayovych shcherbak, a holy man, i am absolutely without... there is no shadow of any

irony there, a holy man, he diplomat, he is very smart, methodical, precise and by this... highly moral, and he made sure that there were no, well, such, well, indecencies, but there were different people in that committee, but i was not ashamed of any of these decisions of the previous composition. to which i joined, but well, it was possible to place slightly different accents, and when our composition of such, you know, revolutionaries came, then we began to bicker, we began to promote avant-garde... projects not by merit, but by what drives ukrainian culture today, well, as i understand it , and there were many images, there was it's an insult that, let's say, the third round of roma balayan, our brilliant director, who

made not his best film, didn't take place there, but how could you insult a living classic, or how could you not give an award? there, let's say, grabovsky, a composer, a representative of this ukrainian musical avant-garde of the 60s, but these are the works that were presented, they were already, they were already, so to speak, inertia, instead things were heard that could in a different context , they would not sound like valik vasyanovych, or atlantis. i don't know the program itself the production program of modern ukrainian music, well, and there are many more, but each of these awards caused the power of the universe of such

fury, and, well, a bad bit of fury, such just, well... hate, in the pure, yes, in the original meaning of this words, because , on the one hand, it is embedded in this award, specifically, because there is a flavor of the soviet award, which was born, although it was born in the times of the league, it is called the stalin award, not stalin's, it is, if nothing else well, it's the khrushchev prize, it seems or 61st, but i think the first laureate was kornichuk, by the way, from literature, no, well, it’s soviet, the tail is very difficult, but the main thing is that there are always suspicions that something

is moving from the mountain and there is always under... surveillance, that any of the public people can be either bent or bribed, this is spilled in society, and when i was a year ago, when i, therefore, gave up my powers, i had such a marathon, a micro-marathon interview, and i'm always asked, well, tell me that you were influenced by the office, and i say, well it's interesting, i... i can be influenced, well , what can you offer me, if i, like me, in the previous years, so to speak, did not acquire anything, but in what way, well, what? look, that is, you are now saying that the mentality of our society is the same, any state

award will always be under suspicion, under scandal, and there will always be people who will not trust, and if it is not a state award, then... they will say, that it is a duel between souls, there are laureates, except that for some reason it is the bbc book of the year, well, because it is the bbc brand, it does not cause such doubts, but still, well people say, well, they agreed among themselves , of course they have their own, of course there is what was once called the russian word grupovshchyna, where will you go, because we are all, all cultural figures... in one way or another they stomp on the same on the playground and you know everyone, or at least through one handshake, you once worked with someone, you were once with someone , you could find a desire, so on, but, but when it starts,

especially when you touch eyes steel type of hierarchy, how they hate us in the union writer. wow, we'll talk about it, how they hated us in the composers' union, about the old hierarchies, we'll definitely talk about it, because it's a very interesting story, this clash. of the new and old worlds, but in fact many of the people who are watching us now have understood that the conversation about the state awards is not only a conversation about the shevchenko prize, but first of all our conversation, our dialogue here is connected with the translation award, with the oldest, very authoritative translation award of maksym rylskyi, which has more than 50 years, and which, as they say, even in those... times of stagnation, when the shevchenko prize was given there for works of socialist realism,

the maxim relsky prize was equally awarded to very worthy people, very worthy translators, that is, this prize is very important, very authoritative, and last week the maksym rylsky award committee announced the names of the 2023 award winners, the award was awarded. in particular, to dmytro drozdovsky, a scientist, literary critic, and eandry shepard, a translator, from russian, for the translation into english of a collection of irpin texts children irpin my home. the problem is that dmytro druzdovsky, a literary critic and researcher at the institute of literature , has been accused of plagiarism more than once and is in... the conclusion of the commission of the institute of literature that 60.64% of one of his scientific works is

plagiarized, and the problem is that that this andrew shepard, who allegedly translated the works of the irpin children together with dmytro drozdovsky, is a translator really from russian and is the editor of the journal of the british-russian society east-west review, this ... good russian ones, that is, until now this publication remains a platform for the representation of russian culture abroad. we are in touch with tamara gundorova, as i promised you, tamara gundorova is a literary critic, a cultural expert, a doctor of philology, a professor who currently teaches ukrainian literature at harvard. ms. tamaro. greetings, good evening, good day, please tell me how you took this decision

of the maksym rylsky award committee? i must say that i was not surprised, because the fact is that this story with rozdovsky, which started four or five years ago, it is not finished, and i have the impression that it is actually like a cancerous tumor. it spreads in our society in the same way and covers different areas, because here we are talking not only about borrowing, let's say, but also about scientific reputation, about the reputation of the translator, the editor of the universe, which remains, remains drozdovsky, you understand what the matter is, when this story with plagiarism began at our institute... i'll just remind you, during the discussion of dmytro druzdovsky's dissertation,

which was carried out in the doctoral course of our institute, the fact of borrowing was discovered, a whole commission was created, which included not only us, as employees of the institute, but also, but we also invited our colleagues from other higher education institutions, from other universities, and we, in fact, we didn't even suspect, in general, what was waiting for us... in fact, we can talk about the fact that this is such a unique fact of such total, total, total plagiarism. well, all the work, actually, when you talk about or you mention 64% borrowing, the situation actually looks like this, that we analyzed 64% of this work , you understand, the manuscript is more than 300 pages, and there are actually 90% of those borrowings, that is, it is a borrowing that can be called... the total here is not about borrowing some pieces, you understand, of the text, texts of others

, here we are talking about articles, for example, articles published in western publications in english, rather poorly translated, which from the beginning, from the first line, from the first word to the end, are inserted as a section of drozdovsky's dissertation, you can imagine, so right there, actually. uh, it turned out that you understand, this kind of uh, fraudulent uh, not quite a decent reputation, approach, turns out to be in various... spheres, and what was important, it seems to me that first of all, this in fact, it was about the destruction of science itself in general, and the paradox is that, despite the fact that after this, this story with drozdovsky, there was a lot of talk about plagiarism, and there was even such

an official order about checking at the level of student works, say , theses. necessarily the articles are also the same, but i want to say that it will continue, and it seems to me to a certain extent that like a cancerous tumor, it permeates ukrainian, in particular, science and humanitarianism to a very large extent, and it reaches other fields, and this story with the award, in fact, it simply points to that, it indicates that it is er, it is this plagiarism, or this dishonesty, it extends to other spheres, it actually... destroys them, as, for example, destroys the very same rila prize. ms. tamara, you wrote last week that drozdovsky is staying at the institute of literature a desirable person, moreover, they are proud of him and perceive him as an unfair victim. how can this be, you are talking about the fact that this is a cancerous tumor, this is the problem of

the ukrainian academy's tolerance for plagiarism. i'm sorry, i'll ask you directly, what would happen if, for example, in a western academy, for example, in harvard, where you teach now, something similar happened, how would colleagues react to such facts? well, i will tell you that in fact dishonesty and plagiarism are not only a purely ukrainian phenomenon, we we hear about these stories all the time, and the recent story at harvard, a very loud story about the dismissal, about the fact that the president of harvard university had to leave the position of president, who was accused of plagiarism, this is a very, very big scandal, but plagiarism it was discussed very often, you understand what is meant by plagiarism, sometimes plagiarism is considered to be simply such well-known phrases that you cannot paraphrase in other words, you understand

, it is like taking, for example, saying that the sky, the sky is blue, let's say there or blue yes , but... you also have to resort to such things, so this is another case, but you understand what the matter is, the case of drozdovsky shows that he was not actually punished anywhere in any field, or does he not answer for his act, apart from the fact that we did everything, we did not allow him to defend , he still has not defended this thesis, by the way, i must say, he made several attempts to negotiate with various universities in... ukraine and defend himself, by the way, with the support of mon, who wrote letters with a request to help him defend himself, take to his defense, he allegedly rewrote it, he changed and so on. but repeated, different, so to speak, examinations showed that nothing in particular had changed there. so trozdovsky remained unpunished, and he remains,

for example, in our institute, he remains, so to speak, a victim of our attack, eh. it says, so to speak, how we became enemies, especially me, because i took the garbage out of the house, you understand, it is considered, i must say that not only among us, let's say, among some employees or in the directorate, but in society also believes that there is nothing special here, everyone does that , you see, here it is a mass saying, but, you understand, at the same time we turned to the shevchenko committee, a member of which... then he was a member of the committee of which drozdovsky was a member, we must give credit to serhiy trimbach, who actually reacted to all that and posed questions to the members of the shevchenko committee, but that's it, but it didn't gain any publicity, but there is one more position, and it's very important here, drozdovsky was and remains the editor

of the universe, you understand, he remains among the members of... er - the editorial board, only, it seems, strykha and oleksandr kronkevich announced that they were leaving the editorial board, but it was quiet, no one talked about it, it was not so much publicly, so that you know about it , you understand what i want to say, that this case with shepherd, it just shows once again that the reputation of science, literary studies, literature, the literary field is actually being undermined not only within the borders of ukraine, but and borrow beyond the limits, because drustovsky attracts to his scams, i can't call it any other way, many scientists, from outside the country, we discovered, for example, that he simply falsifies, he... fakes the reviews of some good people, who, when we approached them, were simply shocked that they got into this story, because all this was interpreted completely differently by drozdovsky, regarding them,

it’s the same with seper too, i was approached by the ambassador, the fact is that i’m not going to be drostovsky’s watchman, you know, in i have my own mission and tasks, but i was told that druzdovsky promises some second-rate, third-rate ukrainian poet to translate it... and publish it somewhere abroad, but obviously, it's just me, people just wrote to me about it and so on, that is, there are a lot of such stories, i want to say that in my understanding drozdovsky is is interesting and brilliant in its own way, brilliant in this way, you know, like a literary character in a swindle novel, so you see, and this story with a prize, it just showed what remains obvious. let me ask you, madam tamara, now about the prize. maxim stricha, a scientist and also a translator, by the way, the only member of the maksym

rylsky prize committee who did not agree and as a sign of protest left the committee, he wrote a text called: "how the rylsky prize was killed." he writes that the committee can still meet and make some decisions, but it will no longer have... well, it will have very little impact on actual ukrainian translation, do you agree that the award was really killed, or in your opinion is this a bit of an exaggeration? you know, it sounds really good, i want to remind you that during actually in the 17th or in the 17th year, i also wrote an article about how drozdovsky, who was a language consultant at the time, was killed. the field of science, they are destroying the field of ukrainian science, so actually, this is just a repetition of these actions. i think to myself, you see, the question is for me,

i really like the fact that i am very glad that you are discussing the actual issue of bonuses today, uh, because it seems to me that the issue of bonuses in general in ukraine is very difficult today, starting from shevchenkivska and rila and so on, i don't think that the award rylsky, that this... story killed the rylsky prize, absolutely not, because the name, because it bears the name of rylsky, as well as the reputation and reputation of arilsky, nothing and no one ever, especially druzdovsky and and and companies, they cannot undermine it, it is about what should be done, how to get out of this situation, and it seems to me, for example, that i myself even wanted to write such a public letter of appeal regarding these awards, well, for example, not only to take the award. rila, but a prize, for example, to lesya ukrainka. premium lesya ukrainka, who also appeared in soviet times, is assigned a prison for children. you can imagine that the most

intellectual ukrainian writer is considered to be a children's writer. this is an absolutely typical soviet gesture when, so to speak, a woman writer is assigned a certain role, well, let's say, an educator, a mother for children and so on. that is, it is only... in such a patriarchal, completely patriarchal society , the most intellectual modernist writer can be considered so, so to speak such a writer, i am not talking about the fact that for children it is not disrespectful, let's say it is not prestigious, simply, letsia ukrainka did not specialize in this, yes, yenestayko, there are many other authors who are actually writers for children, lesya ukrainka. you know, shevylyov wrote a book called a book not for children. he actually spoke about this high, high level of criticism and literature, with the criterion of which he approached

literature. and he said that these are really texts not for children, not for not for infantile, so to speak, reading. here, once again, i was once involved, only once, i think, in the gogol prize, i did not know about its existence at all , you see, i noticed that neither... polarization and the level of the works that are submitted to this award, well, you just understand, well, it’s a horror , gogol is a name that we, we just calmly throw it out of our field, from our literature, from our consciousness and so on, but you understand, google is big, gogol is worth fighting for , and the gogol award should also be given for the best achievements, yes, you understand that is, it seems to me that all these awards that were created in soviet times, their rules, their... principles and everything else should be reconsidered and rewritten, otherwise we will never get over the fact that people like drozdovsky will win, eh, and the way the jury is selected, obviously, the way

the committees are selected, this can be seen, for example, on the example of the current shevchenkivskyi committee, yes, this raises a lot of questions, i think we should talk about it and put it simply began to demand that all these issues be considered at the level of ministries, there is the government and so on, who is responsible for this, thank you, and it was tamara gundarova, we thank you very much for taking the time to get involved, tamara gundarova, a scientist, literary critic, was in touch with us, thank you, to things, a member of the shevchenkiv committee on the previous, like the previous convocations, convocations, by the way, ms. tamara very aptly said now about the composition of the jury and the composition of the committees of some awards, i would say , a large part of the awards are people who are very far from humanitarianism, and i now i will show with...

the appeal that the ukrainian cultural community sent is an open letter, yes , that the activists of culture sent to the prime minister of ukraine, to the minister of culture of ukraine, to the head of the state television radio and to the members of the committee, the maksym rylsky prize itself, and in this appeal , which was signed by many worthy people, it is said that the rylsky prize, actually... the laureate, the laureates of this prize for the past year significantly undermine the role of one of the oldest prizes in ukraine, and devalue translation work, endangering burden in culture and trust in state institutions in general, and now they write about the fact that the committee is very insignificant and poorly represented by specialists in translation, and this calls into question the ability of the

maksymarivskyi committee to assess... the quality of the translation, because several translators from the community suspect the laureate of using a machine translation, that is, it is about druzdovsky, without further editing, besides , the text itself, despite its importance, so these texts of the irpin children, despite the importance of this text, in which, in fact, for for ukraine, as well as for the world, these texts are simple and do not contain any translation challenges that are requested. workers of culture, what the cultural community is asking: first, to cancel the results of this year's award due to the unreliability of the professional community, distrust of the professional community, secondly - to form clear criteria and a clear system for evaluating nominated works, this is what tamara gundurova spoke about, and to dismiss the current staff of the rylsky award committee. in your opinion, yura, will it save, or these three

points? will they save the rylsko award? come on let's start from the very beginning , why is it important in principle, because we have already been on the air for 10 minutes, and i imagine how people on the other side of the tv, what are they talking about , some kind of garylsky award, translation, some drozdovsky well, maybe the word scandal, yes scandal, kept them at the screen. first of all, translation is an extremely important branch of national culture, this is the first, and now nataliya yakovenko, well, our giant, historian, maybe i don't know, well, there is number one or not number one in ukrainian history.

of historiography, she, to my taste, is a historian number one, who abandoned her research and translates even "tita livia" into ukrainian. titus livius is an ancient roman historian who wrote 100 volumes there, and lo and behold, mrs. natalya is sitting and translating, when she is asked why, she says, well, she can’t, it’s... how, if there is no titalivius in the culture , it’s all the same, well, how can there be no shakespeare in culture, it’s not pre-culture, yes, and this is a very important point, that is, these are the people who bring the world cultural heritage into your own culture, or there, let’s say, oleksiy panych translates aristotle, and we have a high-quality philosophical one translated by a professional philosopher.