In his old age, the former prime minister began translating Pushkin into Ukrainian
Former Prime Minister of Ukraine Vitold Fokin (who held office at the very beginning of Independence - after the collapse of the USSR) by the age of 80 realized that his mission was to translate the works of Alexander Pushkin into Ukrainian. Fokin's books became bestsellers.
Alexander Krasovitsky, General Director of the Folio Publishing House, stated this on the air of NewsOne.
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“At the age of 80, he realized that his destiny included translating Pushkin into Ukrainian; he worked on this work for two years. This is "Ruslan and Lyudmila", a classic retelling, as they did 100 and 200 years ago, translating children's literature into another language - the author of this work brought a lot of his own. Here the Ukrainian realities, at a minimum, are that the heroes are dressed in Ukrainian clothes, eat Ukrainian dishes, of course, speak that same Ukrainian language - juicy and savory, which is completely different from Pushkin’s Russian language. And the main thing is that he did some research and tried to find those passages that the censors supposedly cut out from the 20-year-old Pushkin, and dilute them with his own text...
The book was successfully published, the first printing was instantly sold out, and it is on sale in its second printing. Readers tasted it and figured it out. Now that there were big sales on children's literature for St. Nicholas Day, this book was a hit. The total circulation is three thousand. For Ukraine, any circulation that is more than one and a half thousand is already a bestseller,” Krasovitsky said.
In his old age, the former prime minister began translating Pushkin into Ukrainian.