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28 WWW.UNWLA.ORG “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, КВІТЕНЬ 2017 Bitter Harvest Excerpted from a letter forwarded to the UNWLA by Scholarship Program alumna Nadia Kerecuk In early February, I was honoured to be invited to a pre-preview of Bitter Harvest . . . a long overdue feature film about one of the most harrowing chapters of the history of Ukraine : the 1932 – 1933 Holodomor of the Soviet period. (And a love story too.) Produced by Roadside Attractions, Bitter Harvest was filmed in Ukraine in 2013 with post-production continued in London’s Pinewood Studios in early 2014 using the official James Bond filming tank for under-water filming. On general release from 24 th February in the UK . . . this is a film directed by talented George Mendeluk and produced by Ian Ihnatowycz with script by Richard Bachynsky Hoover and a fabulous cast: Max Irons, Samantha Barks, Barry Pepper, Tamer Hassan, Lucy Brown, Terence Stamp, Jack Hollington, Richard Brake, Ostap Stupka, Alexander Pecheritsyia. A bit of background. There is evidence that the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones (1905–1935) was the first to publicize the existence of the 1932–1933 famine in the Soviet Union in the 1930s in the West. The first translation of Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell ( Eric Arthur Blair, 1903 – 1950) was translated into Ukrainian as Колгосп тварин in 1947, published by ‘Prometei’ in Munich. It was translated by Ivan Cherniatynskyi (pen name of Ihor Shevcenko, 1922–2004). Shevcenko was a specialist in Byzantine studies and co-founder of Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. The Ukrainian edition brings a six-page foreword by George Orwell addressed to the Ukrainian people, particularly those displaced, who found themselves in Germany after WWII. There is a photo of the author too. 1,500 copies were printed with the interesting fact that George Orwell himself paid for the Ukrainian edition. Unsurprisingly, this edition was banned in the Soviet Union and translations began to emerge in the late 1980s without the word kolhosp (kolkhoz in Russian) meaning ‘collective farm.’ There are more translations into Ukrainian now. There have also been suggestions that Mr Jones, the owner of the Manor Farm in Animal Farm is Gareth Jones. There is a 1954 animated version of the novella, and there have also been documentaries about the making of the animated film in the UK. In London, on the corner of Avenue Road and Newtwon Avenue in Acton, in the gardens of the Ukrianain Autocephalous Orthodox Church, stands a monument remembering the millions who tragically lost their lives during the Holodomor. At the end of the screening, one pertinent comment was that Bitter Harvest should be shown in every school in the UK. Following the wisdom of Socrates (c. 470-c. 399 BC), there is but one evil, ignorance. — With kindest regard, Nadia ____________________________________ Editor’s Note: Nadia Kerecuk is an alumna of the UNWLA Scholarship Program, a historian of ideas (independent scholar), linguist, writer, and translator. She wrote her PhD thesis on Oleksander Potebnia. Born in Brazil, Nadia has dual British-Brazilian citizenship. From 1992 t0 2007, she worked for UK Government Departments, in 2007 was headhunted by the Embassy of Brazil, where she has worked since. She has continued her research into grammatical thought (Ukrainian, Portuguese, English and Slavonic) and history of psychology and philosophy of language, and regularly speaks/lectures at specialist international conferences. A respected scholar, she has been reelected as an Executive Committee Member of the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas, and is a member of other European and International learned societies. A passion for research into all language uses extends to literature and reading for pleasure; she created and convenes the highly appraised Brazilian Bilingual Book Club of the Embassy of Brazil. She has three children: Dr. Larissa Kerecuk, Consultant in paediatric nephrology and Lead for Rare Diseases, Andrian, an environmental scientist and Filimon, a chemical engineer. She also has one granddaughter, Alexandra. Note from N. Kerecuk : I remain indebted to UNWLA's Scholarship Program and, particularly, pay homage to my magnanimous sponsor Mrs. Melania Banach, a remarkable scientist, who has bequeathed an invaluable legacy through her sponsorships. Mrs. Banach enabled me to pursue my research into the history of ideas by tracking, contextualizing and recording the thoughts of Ukrainian linguists, philosophers, other men/women of genius through centuries, whose ideas gained common worldwide currency, albeit anonymously, in the mainstream world intellectual history. I have been doing it for sheer pleasure and dedicating my publications to Mrs. Banach and the UNWLA. The selfless dedication of the UNWLA teams also deserves special recognition on its 5oth anniversary!
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