2022 Translation Awards

Prior to the Soviet period, Ukraine enjoyed diverse contacts with its Islamic neighbours: the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire and, likewise, with its central and western European neighbours, especially Poland and France. This book reintroduces Ukraine's long-overlooked connections beyond Eastern Europe and smashes old stereotypes about Ukrainian isolation. The author provides insight into Ukrainian travellers in the Middle East, from pilgrims to the Holy Land to political exiles in Turkey and Iran; Tatar slave raiding in Ukraine; the poetry of Taras Shevchenko and the Russian war against Imam Shamil in the High Caucasus. The book explores Ukrainian themes in relation to French writers Honoré de Balzac and Prosper Mérimée, as well as Rembrandt's mysterious painting The Polish Rider; and Ilya Repin's legendary work depicting Zaporozhian Cossacks writing their satirical letter to the Turkish sultan.

The book’s Jewish Ukrainian author analyzes the most painful events in the history of the Ukrainian and Jewish peoples and focuses on the systematic efforts of Russia’s tsarist and Soviet empires to sow interethnic conflict, employing disinformation and historical fabrications to create hatred and disfunction. Relying on recently declassified KGB archives from the Security Service of Ukraine (СБУ), as well as CIA and OUN archives, the author seeks to uncover buried facts about several 20th-century Ukrainian and Jewish historic figures, some of whom are connected to the most contentious moments in the history of Ukraine and Israel. The author views the common aspirations of the Jewish and Ukrainian peoples to preserve their own identity and fight for their independence — the will to survive — as the mutual bond that ties both nations together.

This timely and relevant book places imperial nationalism and chauvinism at the centre of Putin’s Russia and identifies them as the driving pretext for the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The book highlights a Tsarist White Russian imperial denial of the existence of a distinct Ukrainian nation, as reflected in Putin’s obsession with Ukraine. The author traces the intensification of Russian chauvinism towards Ukraine and Ukrainians through three critical junctures in Putin’s political career. The book investigates nationalism within the Russian Orthodox Church and pinpoints the dangerous rise of the red-white-brown (Soviet-Tsarist-fascist) nationalist coalition under Vladimir Putin.

Leonid Finberg’s speech for Horbachov at the 2022 Peterson Literary Prize Awards.

Video greeting from journalist Stanislav Aseyev, author of «Світлий Шлях: Історія одного концтабору» (The Torture Camp on Paradise Steet). The original Ukrainian-language edition was a Finalist for the 2022 Peterson Literary Prize.

Larysa Ivshyna’s speech at the 2022 Peterson Literary Prize gala.