Ukrainian books reach Montreal

The Salon du Livre de Montreal has been held since 1975. Once attended by representatives of the Americas only, the Montreal forum has attracted book publishers from all over the world in the past decades. This time the book fair welcomed Ukraine‘s official delegation, which consisted of State Television and Radio Committee executives, book publishers, and sellers. We asked Anatolii Murakhovsky, acting chairman of the Committee and the head of the delegation, to tell us about the specifics of this book forum.

“Depending on the range of books displayed, all international book exhibits are classified into universal ones, which combine all types and varieties of publications, and specialized ones, such as, for example, exhibits of children’s books, religious books, comics, calendars, etc.,” Murakhovsky says. “The international book fair in Montreal, Canada, is a universal book forum, i.e., one can find any kind of literature here. By the commercial criteria, this fair is not for the participants to buy and sell publication and reprint rights and licenses, as is the case with the Frankfurt fair, for example. Rather, this fair is aimed at the purchase and sale of finished products. For this reason, the Salon du Livre de Montreal is of primary interest for book sellers and distributors, as well as for the general public because books are being sold right at the stalls here.

“The book publishing business has made a breakthrough in the province of Quebec over the past three decades. While in 1970 book publishing accounted for a mere 5 percent of the entire local book market (with the remaining 95 percent belonging to the literature imported from France, the US, and English-speaking Canada), now the local publishing houses, mostly concentrated in Montreal, are turning out 35 percent of all the book products marketed in Quebec. If you add educational publications to this, the figure will be 50 percent.

“Incidentally, book publishing was generously subsidized until recently by Canada’s federal and Quebec’s provincial governments because the local makers of printed products would have hardly withstood the pressure of the international market.

“An interesting detail: when the State Television and Radio Committee was drawing up the concept of the 2009-12 target group-oriented national book popularization program, our experts thoroughly studied the experience of Canada, which had adopted the special Book Publishing Industry Development Program in 1972. The government annually allocated several dozen million Canadian dollars to implement it. This program gave certain preferences to national book publishers: additional funds for the publishers whose property was run by the state; financial support for the distributors of Canadian books to help them improve their bibliographical databases; funding projects that dealt with the advertisement and study of the Canadian book market.

We hope that Ukraine will strengthen, as Canada once did, the book publishing sector to the extent that it will be capable of meeting society’s demand for various publications.”

Tell us please about the Ukrainian delegation’s sojourn in Montreal.

“We have scheduled several working meetings with the exhibit organizers, administrative employees of the Montreal book fair, members of the Quebec provincial association of English-language publishers, and representatives of the Quebec National Library. We also intend to meet James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages.

“We are now building bridges to secure trouble-free access to the American continent for Ukrainian books. There is a large Ukrainian community living in Canada. Therefore, there is a considerable demand for Ukrainian books here. The first step in this direction will be the launching of Ukrainian books for representatives of the Ukrainian community in Montreal, to be held in the building of the Ukrainian Youth Association in Montreal.”

What publications will be exhibited?

“We will put on display the publications that adequately reflect the present-day condition of the publishing sector in Ukraine and graphically show the successes of specific publishing houses and organizations, such as Veselka, Lybid, Mystetstvo, Kartografia, Grani-T, Rodovid, Svichado, Akonit, Kyiv Mohyla Academy Publishing House, Baltia-druk, Perun, etc. Incidentally, the top executives of the Lybid and Grani-T publishing houses are members of the official Ukrainian delegation and will take an active part in all the working meetings.

“We are also exhibiting a large number of albums on architecture, crafts, painting, graphics, and sculpture.

“We have also prepared an exposition commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor in Ukraine. It involves the books of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy Publishing House, including a two-volume publication, The 1932-1933 Holodomor in Ukraine. Documents and Materials, edited by Doctor of History Ruslan Pyrih, and the five-volume Chronicle. The 1932-1933 Holodomor in Ukraine prepared by Vasyl Marochka and Olha Movchan of the Institute of History, Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences. These unique publications comprise some hitherto unpublished documents and materials, archival funds of Ukraine and Russia, Joseph Stalin’s correspondence and cryptograms, peasants’ letters to the party and government’s nomenclature, and dispatches by foreign diplomats on the tragic events of the 1930s.

“Incidentally, the large-scale explanatory and propaganda activities of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and other Ukrainian NGOs in North America greatly contributed to the fact that Canada’s parliament passed a resolution last May recognizing the 1932-1933 Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.”

Ukraine respects and highly values their self-sacrificing work. There are a lot of publications dedicated to the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada and the US.

“I would like to stress that our government financially supported the publication of books on this subject. For example, the Ethnos publishing house published Reflections on a Two-Way Bridge by Stanislav Lazebnyk and Olha Havura. This book introduces the Ukrainian reader to the history of relationships between Ukraine and the Ukrainian community in Canada during a long stretch of time.

“The same author (Lazebnyk) published the book A Hundred-Percent Ukrainian from America, which recounts the life story of one of the 20 million Ukrainians-Myroslav Hnatiuk, a doctor, an artist, an OUN insurgent, who was born in Ternopil region. World War II events are also in the highlight of the novel Source of Wrath by Hnat Berdo, a national liberation fighter, who now resides in Canada.

“The State Television and Radio Committee is interested in further publications of books on the past and present-day life of the Ukrainian community in Canada. In the immediate future the above-mentioned Ethnos publishing house is planning to publish, as part of the Ukrainian Book program, a collection of the Ukrainian diaspora’s poems for children, titled Zhuravlyky (Little Cranes) and edited by Dmytro Cherednychenko and Halyna Kyrpa, and the poetic anthology Lystok z vyriiu (A Leaf from the Hot Countries), which will acquaint readers with the works of Ukrainian poets coming from various countries of the world.”