the ukrainian collective of ukrainian composers is standing there, boris johnson is jumping up and down, macron is standing there, plugging in and enjoying it, and when it was heard, i said , come on, why not, it actually came out of the mouth of the minister of culture, right tkachenko, it came out of the mouth of the director of the odessa opera , and '. enough, and i, in turn , picked up, well, i, it’s called, how to put it so delicately, simple-minded, i, and in this way, and in this way it gave arguments, yes, to those people who always suspected, yes, that is, this inertia suspicions about the shevchenkivsky 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

most importantly, that you were detained in connection i was delayed with this, 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 these all combos, i don't buy them, neither live, nor did i pick her up, because she seemed right to me, but in fact it was wrong, and when my colleagues insisted and started saying that from the committee, yes, and all the people there are very difficult and very independent, and it is simply impossible to put pressure on them, it is...

i repeat it all, i repeat it many times, these are very worthy 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 society. and here is my question: is it, in your opinion, actually like that the fate of these state awards, which will always be , there will always be arguments from people who are suspicious, there will always be these suspicions, or if you had not made this mistake, and the award would still be reputationally intact beyond suspicion and it would function properly, so that the previous awards, which, well, i was there in the previous composition under the chairmanship of yury mykolayovych shcherbak, a holy man, i absolutely am. well, without any, well, without a price, there

is some irony, a holy man, he is a diplomat, he is very smart, methodical, precise and at the same time, he is highly moral, and he made sure that there were no such inconsistencies, but there were different people in that committee, but i was not ashamed of any of these decisions of the previous composition . .. i joined, well, but well, it was possible to place slightly different accents, and when our group of such, you know, revolutionaries came, well, then we started bickering, we started promoting avant-garde projects, not based on the totality of merits, but for the fact that exactly today is driving ukrainian culture, well, like me, ugh, i understand that, and there were a lot of insults, there was an insult that, let's say, it didn't pass... the third

round of roma balayan, our brilliant director, who made a film that wasn't his best, but how could you insult a living classic, or how could you not give a prize there to, say , a composer from grabov, 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 said that might not have been in another context were sounded, like valik vasyanovych, this atlantis or, i don't know, a program, actually a production program of modern ukrainian music in the ear, well and many more, but each of these... awards caused the power of the universe to be so

furious, and well, bad it's like rage, it's just that... well, hate is in the pure, yes , original meaning of this word, because on the one hand, it is embedded in this award, specifically, because there is a flavor of the soviet award that was born, however, it was born in the times of the league, it is called the stalin prize, not the stalin prize, it is if it's not that, it's the khrushchev prize. it seems to be the 61st, but i think the first louratt was korniychuk, by the way, from the literature, well, no, it’s soviet, the tail is very difficult, but the main thing is that there are always suspicions that something

is moving from above and there is always . the suspicion that any of the public people can be either bent or bribed, this is spread in society, and when i was a year ago, when i, therefore, gave up my authority, i had such a marathon, a micro-marathon of interviews, and they ask me all the time, so tell me what you are there, you were influenced from the office, and i say , well... "how can i be influenced, well, what can be offered to me, if i, in previous years, so to speak, have not acquired anything, so what in a way, so 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, they will say , that it's a common car, there are laureates, except that for some reason it's the bbc's book of the year, well, because it's the bbc brand, it doesn't cause such a thing i doubt it, but anyway, well, people say, well, they agreed among themselves, of course, that there are their own, of course, that there is what was called at the time the russian word groupism, where will you go, because we are all, all actors. cultures are one way or another trampling on the same platform and you know everyone, or at least through one handshake, you once worked with someone, you once were in the same room with someone, you could find a desire, that's it, but, but

when it starts, especially when you touch the eyes of a steel type of hierarchy, as they do us hatred in the union. let's definitely talk, because this is a very interesting story, this is a collision of new and old worlds, but in fact , many of the people who are watching us now have understood that the conversation about state awards is not only about the shevchenko award, but first of all all our conversation, our dialogue here is related to translation. with the oldest , very authoritative maksym rylsky translation prize, which is more than 50 years old and which, as they say, is stagnant even at the time 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, it is a very important prize. very authoritative, and last week the committee of the maksym rylsky prize announced the names of the laureates of the 2023 prize, the prize was awarded, in particular, to dmytro drozdovsky, literature scholar, literary critic, and eandre shepard, a translator from russian for the translation into english of a collection of texts by irpin children. be patient my home. the problem is that a literary critic, a researcher dmytro drozdovsky of the institute of literature, has been accused of plagiarism more than once, and there is a 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 this is andrew shepard, who allegedly translated together with dmytro drozdovsky. works of the irpin children is a translator from russian and is the editor of the journal of the british-russian society east-west review. this publication is a reflection of the views of the so-called good russians, that is, until now this publication remains a platform for the representation of russian culture abroad. we are in touch with tamara gundarova, as i promised you, tamara gundarova is a literary critic, cultural researcher, doctor of philology, a professor who currently teaches ukrainian literature at harvard. mrs. maro, we congratulate you, 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 began four or five years ago, it, it is not finished, and i have such the impression that in fact it is just... a 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, druzdovsky remains , eh, you understand what the matter is, when this story with plagiarism began, we have it... i will just remind you that during the discussion of dmytro drozdovsky's dissertation, which was completed in

the doctoral program of our institute, it was discovered the fact of borrowing, a whole commission was created , which included not only us, as employees of the institute, but also, but also in the same way, we invited our colleagues from other higher education institutions, from other universities, and we, in fact, we did not even suspect, in general , what awaits us. in fact, we can talk about the fact that this is such a unique fact of such total, total, total plagiarism, the whole work in fact, when you talk about or mention 64% of the borrowings, in fact the situation looks like 64% of this work we have analyzed, it is you see, 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 total, this is not about borrowing some pieces,

you understand, of text, texts of others, here we are talking about articles, for example, articles , published in western editions in english, rather poorly translated, which from the beginning, from the first line, from the first word to the end, are inserted as a chapter of druzdovsky's dissertation, you can imagine, so here it is. it didn't turn out that you understand, this one is a fraudulent, not entirely decent reputation , an approach, is revealed in various fields, and what was important, it seems to me that, firstly, it was actually about the destruction of science itself in general, and the paradox is that, despite , 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, let's say, dissertations, necessarily, articles too, but i want to say that it continues, and it is to some extent me it seems that like such a cancerous tumor, it permeates ukrainian, in particular, science and humanitarianism to a very large extent, and it spreads to other fields, and this is exactly the story. with the award, it simply points to, it indicates that this, this, this plagiarism, or this dishonesty, it extends to other areas, and it actually destroys them, as, for example, it destroys the same rila prize. ms. tamara, you wrote last week that drozdovsky remains a desirable person at the institute of literature, moreover , he is proud and accepted unjustly affected, how can this be? you are talking about the fact that this is a cancerous tumor, this is the problem of tolerance

of the ukrainian academy to plagiarism, but excuse me, i will ask you directly, what would happen if, for example, in a western academy, like in harvard, where you currently teach , something similar happened, how would colleagues react to such facts, well, i'll tell you this, it's actually unkind. and playaad is not only a purely ukrainian phenomenon. we hear about these stories all the time, and a recent one at harvard is very much so a loud story about the dismissal that the president of harvard university was forced to resign after being accused of plagiarism, this is a very, very big scandal, but plagiarism happened very often, you understand what is meant by plagiarism, sometimes it is considered plagiarism just such well-known phrases that you cannot paraphrase in other words, you know,

it's like how to take, for example, to say that the sky, the sky is blue, let's say it's blue. yes, but you have to resort to such things too, so that's a different case, but you you understand what the matter is, the case of drozdovskyi shows that he was not actually punished anywhere, in any field, or is not responsible for his actions, besides the fact that we do everything, we did not allow him to defend himself, this he still hasn't defended his thesis, by the way, i must say, he made several attempts to come to an agreement with different universes. in ukraine and defend himself, by the way, with the support of mon, who wrote letters with a request to help him defend himself, to take him to the defense, he allegedly rewrote, he changed and so on, but repeated different yes so to speak, the 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. er , it's said, so to speak, how we became enemies, me in particular, because i took the trash out of the house, you see, it's considered, i must say, not only among us, say, among some employees or in directorate, but in society it is also believed that there is nothing here, everyone does it like that, you know, here they said it en masse, but you understand, at the same time we appealed to the shevchenkiv committee, a member... of which drozdovsky was a member at the time, we must give credit to serhii trimbach, who actually reacted to all that and posed questions to the members, 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 the editorial board, only , it seems, strikha and oleksandr kronkevych announced that they were leaving the editorial board, but it was quiet, no one talked about it, it was not so public that they knew about it, you understand what i want to say, that this case and shepherd, he just once again shows to the fact that the reputation of science, literary studies, literature, the literary field is actually being undermined not only within the borders of ukraine, but also... outside its borders, because druzdovsky involves in his scams, i cannot call it otherwise, many scientists, from outside ukraine, we opened, for example, that he is simply faking, he is falsifying the feedback of some good people who, when we contacted them, were simply shocked that they got into this story, because all this was interpreted completely differently by

drozdovsky, for them, it is the same also, they addressed me, wrote to me, i just... in that i am not going to be drostovsky's watchman, you understand, i have my own mission and tasks, but i was told that drozdovsky promised some secondary , third-rate ukrainian poet to translate and publish it somewhere abroad, and obviously, 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 opinion druzdovsky is interesting and brilliant in his own way, brilliant in this way, you know, like a literary character in a fraudulent novel , and you understand, and this story with the award, it simply showed what remains obvious, i will ask, ms. tamaro, i will ask ms. tamaro, you now have an award, maxim strikha, a scientist and also a translator, by the way, the only member the committee of the maksym rylsky award, which did not agree

and as a sign of protest, leaving the committee, he wrote: a text called: how the rylsky award was killed. he writes that the committee can still meet and make some decisions, but it will no longer have, it will have very little impact on actual ukrainian translation. do you agree that premium has really been killed, or do you think this is a bit of an exaggeration? you know, it's very good. really sounds, i want to remind you that during the 17th or 18th year, i also wrote an article about how drozdovsky, who was a consultant at the time. they are killing the field of science, 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 rylsky and so on, i don't think that the rylsky prize is... that this story killed the rylsky prize, absolutely no, because the name, because it bears the name of rylsky, as well as the reputation of arylsky, nothing and no one ever, especially drozdovsky and and and companies, they cannot undermine it, it is about the fact that it is worth doing, 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, to take an award... not only the rila award, but an award, for example, to lesya ukrainka. the lesya ukrainka award, which also originated in soviet times, is awarded to prisons 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, when, uh, so to speak, a woman, a writer , is given 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 that the most intellectual modernist writer can be considered, so to speak , such a writer who, i am not talking about the fact that for children it is not disrespectful there, let's say it's not prestigious, it's just that lesia ukrainka didn't specialize in this, it's a mess, there are many other authors who are actually writers for children, lesia. you know, shevylyov wrote a book called a book not for children, he actually talked about this high, high level of criticism and literature, with the criteria 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 again, i was once involved, but i was the only one only once, it seems, before the gogol prize , i didn't know about its existence at all , you see, i noticed that... and not the popularity and level of the works that are submitted for this prize, you just understand, well, it's terrible, gogol, 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, gogol is great, it is worth fighting for gogol, and the gogol award should also be given for the best achievements , so you understand, that is, it seems to me that all these awards, which were created in soviet times, must their rights... their principles and everything else should be rethought and rewritten, otherwise we will never get out of the fact that people like drozdovsky will win, eh, and by the way the jury is selected, obviously, the way

the committees are selected, this it can be seen, for example, on the example of the current shevchenkivskyi committee, yes, it raises a lot of questions, i think it is necessary to talk about it and ask, i 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 it. thank you, and this was tamara gundarova, we are very grateful thank you for taking the time to get involved, tamara gundarova, scientist, literary critic, was in touch with us. thank you, by the way, to the members of the shevchenko committee for the previous, like this, previous convocation, convocation, by the way, mrs. tamara very aptly said about the composition. the jury and the composition of the committees of some awards, i would say, of a large part of the awards are people who are very far from humanitarianism, and i will now show

the appeal that the ukrainian cultural community sent, this is an open letter, yes, that the activists of culture sent to 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 of the award itself. and maksym rylskyi, and in this appeal , which was signed by a lot of worthy people, it is said that the rylskyi award, actually the laureate, the laureates of this award for the past year significantly undermine the role of one of the oldest awards in ukraine and devalue translation work, putting under the threat of burdens in culture and trust in state institutions in general, and this is what they write: about the fact that the committee has very little and little specialists from translation are represented, and this calls into question the ability of the

maksymarisko committee. evaluate the quality of the translation, because several translators from the community suspect the laureate of using 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 well, in fact, for ukraine and for the world, these texts are simple and do not contain any translation challenges about... the activists of culture are asking for 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, second - to form clear criteria and a clear system for evaluating nominated works, this is what tamara gundurova spoke about, and to resign the current composition of the rome prize committee. in your opinion, yura, will this save, or will these... three

points save the rylska prize. let's start from the very beginning, why is it important, in principle, because we are here it's been on the air for 10 minutes, and i imagine people on the other side of the tv, what are they talking about, some kind of award-winning translation, some druzdovsky there, and maybe the word scandal, yes scandal, stopped them at the screen. i assure you that we have very , very well-educated and very well-informed people, well, let's start first with translation - it is an extremely important branch of national culture, this is the first thing, and now nataliya yakovenko, well, our giant, historian, maybe i don't know, well, there is number one or not, there is no number one in ukrainian,

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

before... arranged aristotle in ukrainian, i think to myself, we brag, we have almost the first constitution there, there the constitution of philip , yes, the constitution of philip orlyk, who , by the way, knew all this about titus livius and aristotle, because he studied in vilna at the jesuit college, and then at the kyiv-mohyla college, and if... he did not know all this , that is, if it was, well, he obviously knew it in the original, but it was not if we had orlyk's constitution, and there would not be this tradition of constitutional law, there would not be this legal consciousness, at least in certain elites, what is legal consciousness, this means that no moment can put you in a prison there. that mr.

shepard appears there, i don't know, i have to research it every time, but i looked, they put out pieces of this translation, it's just very bad english, you know, very bad for... it's just, well, it's a shame, it's a shame to send to the world on behalf of ukraine, and it is a shame to promote it in such a way, and the third, actually, is integrity in general, because we don't have an institution of reputation, only the dead didn't talk about it, we don't have it...