Colonial Routes: How Soviet Linguistic Imperialism Framed Ukrainian Literature in Translation

Background. Translation has long been a recognized site of power and political struggle, especially in colonial and post-imperial contexts. However, the specific impact of the Soviet Union’s policy of linguistic imperialism, which used Russian as an intermediary language for dialogue with the West, has not received the critical coverage it warrants. This practice was not merely a matter of convenience; it was a deliberate strategy to filter non-Russian literatures through a hegemonic lens, effectively framing Western perceptions and serving as a tool for cultural and linguistic erasure.Purpose. The present article seeks to examine the Soviet-era translational mediation of Ukrainian literature into English via Russian, arguing that this practice reproduced colonial hierarchies and perpetuated linguistic imperialism.Contribution to the research field. The presented combination of findings provides support for the conceptual premise that indirect translation via an imperial language is a key mechanism for perpetuating linguistic violence. By interrogating the structural invisibility of Ukrainian language and identity in global literary circuits of 1950s–1970s and analyzing English translations via Russian, this paper contributes to the fields of linguistics, Ukrainian and translation studies by demonstrating how the perception of Russian as a neutral conduit in fact obscured the Soviet linguicism and rendered it unaccountable.Methods. This study employs a qualitative research approach to analyze the ideological shaping of Ukrainian literary narratives for an Anglophone audience. The research follows a two-part process. First, a corpus is compiled, after which the research proceeds with a deconstructive analysis. This analysis applies a framework of decolonial analytics and editorial studies of translation, which was developed elsewhere by the author, along with a comparative close reading of the source, intermediary, and target texts. This method is used to identify the linguistic manipulations that occur in the process of translation.Results. The article posits that indirect translation through Russian, which served as an imperial lingua franca and colonial intermediary in Soviet times, functioned as a tool of appropriation. This process “sanitized” Ukrainian texts for an Anglophone audience by filtering them through a Moscowcentered epistemic lens. In other words, by using Russian as the intermediary, the Soviet system controlled what was translated, how it was translated, and, most importantly, how Ukrainian literature was perceived internationally. The very act of forcing texts through the filter of an imperial language marginalized Ukraine’s literary identity and enforced Russian as the dominant cultural and linguistic authority. This demonstrates a form of linguistic imperialism where the translational practice itself becomes a tool for imperial erasure.Discussion. Soviet-era mediation of Ukrainian literature through Russian was a well-crafted instrument of linguistic imperialism, systematically erasing Ukrainian cultural and linguistic distinctiveness for Western audiences. In light of this, it is an academic and ethical imperative to adopt a new framework of linguistic accountability, which demands that translators, publishers, and scholars critically acknowledge and transparently account for the historical and political processes of mediation that have skewed cultural representation in post-imperial contexts. By doing so, the framework directly confronts “colonialingualism”, which entrenches colonial legacies, imperial mindsets and inequitable practices in the current discourse.