TARAPUNKA AND MAKHARADZE

The duo of Ukrainian standup comedians Tarapunka and Shtepsel enjoyed tremendous support and popularity in the fifties and sixties in Moscow. What was funny was not so much the content of their numbers hastily concocted by a couple of enterprising Kyivans with the aid of stale jokes as the distribution of roles: the Russian-speaking intelligent Shte psel and the Ukrainian- speaking simpleton Tarapunka, the personification of a khokhol (derisive word for Ukrainian — Ed.) who derides in his mother tongue, together with his Russian brother, the “occasional shortcomings” of our prosperous state. Something of the kind would have been impossible, say, in Georgia, Armenia or Estonia, where the practice was to speak either in the native language or in Russian, but not in both at the same time. Neither the fiery Caucasians nor the quiet Balts would have understood this kind of humor. But here, such tarapunkism became a norm of life running counter to generally accepted practice in the outside world.

The professional level of journalists is not the chief problem of our sports televised journalism. We have quite enough people who can point out, skillfully and without mistakes, who, for whom and with which foot scored a goal, or who beat who in round so-and-so. The main thing begins when a journalist directly communicates with an athlete, without which a full-blooded sports television product is impossible. The same applies to the expert commentaries that set off to advantage any good sport program. But as soon as this communication begins, we see tarapunkism return. The Ukrainian athlete or coach addresses the Ukrainian correspondent on Ukrainian television in a language other than Ukrainian. This is a painfully typical picture, painfully because those answering the questions understand excellently or know the native language perfectly well. But something stops them, something keeps them from speaking the language of the country whose honor they defend in the sports arena. What exactly is it?

Some will ask whether this is really a problem. All they have to do is score and win, does it make any difference what language these athletes speak? Then why does Oleh Blokhin grant interviews in Greek, when he is in Greece, the Klychko brothers in German, when in Germany, and Andriy Shevchenko has learned some Italian in a mere eight months? You can give endless examples. After this, you find it hard to believe that an athlete who despises the language of his native land is really able to raise the prestige of this land. Even foreigners help us in this, entering the names of our athletes in the Ukrainian spelling into the fact sheets of international competitions. On the day when Andriy Shevchenko was to play his presentation match in Milan last year, Italian fans were carefully writing out a huge banner in Ukrainian: “Laskavo prosymo, Andriy!” (Welcome, Andriy!). They no longer write so. The Milan tiffosi’s placards now carry the pidgin “Sheva” instead of “Andriy.”

It would be wrong to say there have been no attempts to Ukrainize our sports. In the early nineties, Jozsef Szabo was not embarrassed to speak Ukrainian, although he is known to be of Hungarian origin. But later this initiative died out, having no backing from above. Support should come at least in making it obligatory that contracts which the Professional Soccer League signs with the clubs should include post- match press conferences in Ukrainian. Dodgers should be fined. Why do you think all foreigners playing soccer in Italy quickly learn to chat fluently in the language of pizza and spaghetti lovers? In Italy, where soccer is a super profitable business, there are no dumb players and coaches, just as there are no ugly women here. It is the same everywhere, without exception. Proud Dutchman Van Gaal learned Catalan in Barcelona within eight months, then he mastered Spanish proper and now he knows on which television station he should say salida (exit) in Spanish or sortida in Catalan. The Italian soccer maestro Trappatoni, staying in Munich for two years, not only learned German fast but also complemented it with the Bavarian dialect. Why then is it possible to show contempt for this country, speaking publicly in the perhaps more accustomed but still foreign Russian language? I will bet any amount of money that even one address of Lobanovsky to this country’s fans in Ukrainian will increase by the hundreds the number of buses bringing our rednecks to Kyiv to watch international matches at the Olympic stadium. It would also allow Kyivans to distinguish between Dynamo and the national team and not to ask why Kaladze was not fielded against Zidane. The point is that Kaladze is a Georgian, so he will never answer in the “generally recognized” (Russian) language. The question was asked in Georgian.

I happened a few years ago to rub shoulders with some English Ukrainians who often come to Kyiv to see the matches of our national team. They told me about an episode that took place in Northern Ireland after our side won a match. Wearing national costumes, the Anglo- Ukrainian fans came to our players, welcoming them with the words “slava Ukrayini!” (glory to Ukraine!) to which they heard in Russian, “What are you doing, boys? We don’t get it.”

Maybe this is why some of our soccer players face the feral dilemma of whether to play for Ukraine or Uzbekistan. Underestimation of national identity will lead, sooner or later, to sad consequences; and the politicians who bet on soccer will lose some soccer points in the next elections. Do you say it is very hard and next to impossible to retrain the players and coaches? You’re wrong.

Last year’s Kyiv mayoral elections showed that Mr. Surkis speaks excellent Ukrainian. If Mr. Surkis began to hold Soccer League meetings in Ukrainian, others would immediately remember what they had studied in school and those who had not studied would rush to enroll in crash courses. And the prestige of soccer, as well as that of Mr. Honorary President of Dynamo, would also rise. And what effect would our boxing brothers make if they began to speak the mother tongue! Do they find it more difficult than German?

For more than one year, all of Ukraine was indignant over the primitivism of soccer commentators who reported from the main sport arenas. People voted by changing channels, switching over to the Moscow channels which broadcast really high class commentary. This suited our sport and television bosses for a very long time, for they only wanted the commentator to say what he was asked to at the right moment, and all the rest was not essential. Quite recently, television aired the first commentator who speaks Ukrainian fluently. Our joy that he did not have to grope for words was short-lived: in any case, we lagged behind the Russians. So they found a way out: the famous Kote Makharadze was invited to comment for Kyiv. Older-generation fans remember very well his colorful reportage on central Soviet television in the seventies and eighties. There even was a moment when the Georgian commentator became a compromise figure to comment, as a “neutral,” on the matches of Kyiv and Moscow teams. All this was very good, but at a different time and in a different country. But now the Georgian commentator plays on our screens the role of the half-forgotten Shtepsel, emphasizing the primitivism of his Ukrainian-speaking reportage partner. Thus, the fall of the last Ukrainian fortress in our sports, televised coverage in the native language, is imminent. This is the long-nurtured dream of a group of sports journalists who are “fed up” with writing and speaking in the language of their state. Their main reasoning is to bring our televised sports back to “normal,” that is, to its complete and final Russification. Indeed, the number of Shtepsels in our sports in general and soccer in particular is not falling. Answering in Russian the questions asked in Ukrainian, they are not aware that they resemble not so much the basically well-mannered Shtepsel as the characters of Nikulin-Vitsyn- Morgunov from the classic film The Caucasian Captive Girl who said, “I don’t speak any Russian, but I understand everything.”

It would look unusual and almost impossible, at first glance, if all Kyiv Dynamo players, including the Georgians, Belarusians, Russians, and Uzbeks, began to speak Ukrainian with television journalists. But it seemed equally impossible ten years ago that a blue- yellow flag and a trident might be hoisted over the Communist Party Central Committee. Ukraine is reality. And the sooner we part with the Tarapunka syndrome, the better.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Mykola Neseniuk may be rather harsh in his assessments. However, we cannot but agree with the author that Ukraine faces the problem of not only (or even not so much? — Ed. ) the Russian but also the Ukrainian language, We invite our readers (including Oleksandr Hlyvinsky about whom the famous Kote Makharadze spoke in quite flattering terms: “He is full of ideas, talks fast, and loves soccer”) to continue the debate. Please send your views by ordinary or electronic mail.