Translations of The Lord of the Rings into Russian

Russian interest in J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...

's The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...

awoke soon after its publication in 1955, long before the first Russian translation.

A first effort at publication was made in the 1960s, but in order to comply with literary censorship in Soviet Russia

Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....

, the work was considerably abridged and transformed. The ideological danger of the book was seen in the "hidden allegory 'of the conflict between the individualist West and the totalitarian, Communist East'" (Markova 2006), while, ironically, Marxist readings in the west conversely identified Tolkien's anti-industrial ideas as presented in the Shire with primitive communism

Primitive communism

Primitive communism is a term used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to describe what they interpreted as early forms of communism: As a model, primitive communism is usually used to describe early hunter-gatherer societies, that had no hierarchical social class structures or capital accumulation...

, in a struggle with the evil forces of technocratic capitalism

Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

.

Russian translations of The Lord of the Rings circulated as samizdat

Samizdat

Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...

and were published only after the collapse of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, but then in great numbers; no less than ten official Russian translations appeared between 1990 and 2005 (Markova 2006). Tolkien fandom in Russia grew especially rapidly during the early 1990s at Moscow State University

Moscow State University

Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...

. Many unofficial and partly fragmentary translations are in circulation. The first translation appearing in print was that by Kistyakovskij and Muravyov (volume 1, published 1982).

Russian translations and retellings of The Lord of the Rings:

Translation	Publication	Translator	Comment
1966	1990	Z. A. Bobyr; Зинаида Анатольевна Бобырь	short retelling, published as "Повесть о Кольце" (1990), "Властители Колец" (1991)
1976	2002	A. A. Gruzberg; Александр Абрамович Грузберг	translation, as "Повелитель Колец". published in 2002 in Yekaterinburg Yekaterinburg Yekaterinburg is a major city in the central part of Russia, the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Situated on the eastern side of the Ural mountain range, it is the main industrial and cultural center of the Urals Federal District with a population of 1,350,136 , making it Russia's... (with the poem translated by A. V. Zastyrets ).
1970s	unpublished	S. L. Koshelev; Сергей Львович Кошелев	fragments
	1982, 1991–1992	A. A. Kistyakovsky Andrey Kistyakovsky Andrey Andreyevich Kistyakovsky was a Russian translator and political activist. He translated the belles-lettres from English to Russian and began publishing in 1967.... (prologue and first book), V. S. Muravyov Vladimir Muravyov (translator) Vladimir Sergeyevich Muravyov was a Russian translator and literary critic. He was awarded the Inolit Prize for Best Translation in 1987 .... (second book, poems); Андрей Андреевич Кистяковский, Владимир Сергеевич Муравьев	In 1982, only the first volume was published in abridged form due to Soviet censorship. For about a decade, this was the only version of The Lord of the Rings publicly available in Russia. The full translation appeared in 1991-1992.
1984	1991	N. Grigoryeva, V. Grushetsky, I. B. Grinshpun (poems); Наталья Григорьева, Владимир Грушецкий и И.Б.Гриншпун
1980s	unpublished	N. Estel; Н.Эстель
1980s	1991	V. A. Matorina; В.А.М.	the translation dates to the mid to late 1980s, first published in 1991 with Amur, Khabarovsk Khabarovsk Khabarovsk is the largest city and the administrative center of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia. It is located some from the Chinese border. It is the second largest city in the Russian Far East, after Vladivostok. The city became the administrative center of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia... , 2nd ed. Eksmo, Moscow Moscow Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent... . Matorina worked from bootlegged microfiche copies of the Library of Foreign Literature, Moscow, and the translation was in limited circulation in manuscript form.
1985	2002	A. V. Nemirova; Алина Владимировна Немирова	the translation dates to the period 1985-1987, 1991–1992 and appeared with Folio, Kharkov in 2002.
1989	unpublished	A. I. Alyohin; А.И.Алёхин	Audio record of a Russian translation of volumes 2 and 3, based on the Polish translation of Maria Skibniewska.
	1994	Mariya Kamenkovich, V. Karrik, S. Stepanov (poems); Мария Каменкович, Валерий Каррик, Сергей Степанов	based on the translation by Matorina ("В.А.М."), Kamenkovich and Karrik provide a detailed commentary on the themes of Christianity and Germanic mythology as they appear in the work.
1990s	unpublished	K. Kinn; Кэтрин Кинн	fragments
1990s	unpublished	I. Zabelina; Ирина Забелина
	1999	L. Yahnin; Леонид Яхнин	abridged retelling for children.
	2000	V. E. Volkovsky, V. Vosedoy; Виталий Эдуардович Волковский, В.Воседой
	2002	M. Belous; М.Белоус	retelling
	2003	I. I. Mansurov; И.И.Мансуров	volumes 1 and 2 only

See also