Now that the 21st Moscow International Book Fair has just ended, experts’ predictions that this year’s book fair would be the biggest ever have panned out. Ticket sales (60 rubles, or 12 Ukrainian hryvnias) indicate that over 300,000 guests visited the book fair. Every visitor left the exhibit center with a package of books. Booklovers were treated to a huge variety of books: over 180,000 titles. The program of the book fair included numerous book launches, meetings with writers, autograph sessions, and roundtables.
PUBLISHING VICTORIES
Ukraine contributed some brilliant color to the palette of the “September Collection of Works.” The head of the Ukrainian delegation, First Vice-Deputy of the State Committee of TV and Radio Broadcasting Anatolii Murakhovsky, said that the Ukrainian side expected international recognition of Ukraine as a publishing state and an economic result in the form of increased exports of Ukrainian books abroad.
The first task was fulfilled during the book fair. Proof of this was Ukraine’s victory in the international competition Book Art with the participation of the CIS member countries.
The Ukrainian Hrani-T Publishing House won this year’s Grand Prix for Mykola Hohol’s book St. Petersburg Stories. The unique illustrations to this book were made 20 years ago by the Lviv artist Yurii Charyshnykov, who worked on his series of prints for five years. No publishing house dared to publish them then because they were too surrealistic. It was only this year that the artist found support and understanding among publishers.
Russia’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Ukraine Viktor Chernomyrdin presented the prize to the head of the publishing house, Volodymyr Puzikov. He said that this publication is a good start for the preparations for Hohol’s 200th birth anniversary. Besides an honorable diploma, the publishing house received a certificate for one million rubles from the Foundation of Humanitarian Cooperation of the CIS member states. The money will be used to purchase copies of the prize-winning book and distribute it throughout the CIS member countries. The first shipment of books will go to Dushanbe, where the Third Forum of Creative and Scholarly Intellectuals will take place soon. Copies of the book will be presented to the forum participants, libraries, and scholarly institutions of Tajikistan.
The Ukrainian delegation brought home another prize from Moscow. The state-run Mystetstvo Publishing House received the First Prize in the Art-Book Category for its book Essays from the History of Costumes.
“The author Kostiantyn Stamerov devoted his whole life to this fundamental research,” explained the director of the publishing house, Nina Prybieha. “People’s Artist of Ukraine Mykola Hrokh worked on the illustrations to this book for 25 years. This is wonderful recognition for their work.”
Both of these books were on sale at the Ukraine stand. Even though these fundamental publications are expensive (500 hryvnias for St. Petersburg Stories), all the copies were sold out in the first few days of the fair.
FROM ATLASES TO INORGANIC MATERIALS SCIENCE
Maps of Ukrainian cities and highways, issued by the Kartohrafiia Publishing House, were immediately sold out. There was also a demand for the art albums Sofia Kyivska (Sophia of Kyiv) and Khramy Ukrainy (Churches of Ukraine).
Scholarly publications on technical subjects also attracted the attention of the book fair visitors. The first volume of the encyclopedic publication Inorganic Materials Science by the Ukrainian scientist Heorhii Hnesin was launched at the Ukrainian stand. When this reporter asked whether it is worthwhile exhibiting books that are meant only for experts, not the general reading audience, which is mainly interested in semi-popular scientific literature, the author answered edgily with his own question.
“Do you want people to think that Ukraine is a state without either science or industry? We brought 50 copies of the book, and all of them are sold out. Experts from the Moscow Institute of Engineering and Physics and Moscow’s Institute of Extra-Hard Materials visited our stand. Our publication embraces knowledge of a whole number of sciences: physical chemistry, hard matter physics, modern research methods for application to the modern instrument-making, aerospace, aircraft construction, mechanical engineering, and electronics industries. We have received orders for the book from the US, France, Greece, and Israel. There is a need for scholarly publications in places where Russian-speaking scholars work.”
Extensive discussions took place during the launches of books on acute political and historical topics, for example, the third encyclopedic volume of Ukraine-Europe: Chronology of Development (the heads of this publishing project are Professor Anatolii Tolstoukhov and People’s Deputy of the Fourth and Fifth convocations Volodymyr Zubanov) and Dmytro Tabachnyk’s journalistic book “Duck Soup” in Ukrainian.
Discussions were a special feature of the Moscow book fair, taking place both during the scheduled roundtables and informally near publishers’ stands. Ukrainians who have been living in Russia for a long time visited our stand to buy books and speak Ukrainian. There were some amusing incidents. A young woman bought the last copy of the book St. Petersburg Stories and insisted on getting a press release about this publication. When this reporter asked which newspaper she represented, she replied, “I am the interior decorator for a very expensive and fashionable restaurant, and your book will be part of our decor.”
A visitor from the Russian city of Ulianovsk was very eager to buy Oleksandr Svystunov’s photograph at The Day’s photo exhibit, which featured horse’s teeth. The guest was a dentist, who thought the photo would make a nice present for her colleagues.
SHEVCHENKO IS ALWAYS IN HIGH ESTEEM
Visitors to the book fair were very interested in works of fiction. The miniature publications of the Folio Publishing House were in great demand. Ambassador Chernomyrdin showed an interest in a miniature collection of aphorisms entitled I Am the State. The display copy was opened on the page with Menandros’s quotation, “Power gives an imprint of truth to words.” The hosts of the stand presented the book to the ambassador.
“Every second visitor was asking for books by Taras Shevchenko, Skovoroda, Kotliarevsky, and Lesia Ukrainka,” the commercial director of the Folio Publishing House, Narhis Hafurova, explained. “Classics were also bought both in the original language and in Russian translation. Books by modern Ukrainian authors, such as Andrey Kurkov, Yurii Andrukhovych, Valentyn Badrak, and Iren Rozdobudko, were also in demand. Of course, if you compare the Kyiv Book Fair or the Lviv Book Forum, the amounts of our sales are much smaller here. But the fact that Ukrainian books are in demand in Moscow is an optimistic forecast for its advancement on the Russian market.”
The president of the Ukrainian Association of Publishers and Book Distributors, Oleksandr Afonin, also believes that Ukrainian books should be on the Russian market. “We expect that this year’s export of books to Russia will total nearly four million hryvnias. Of course, this is very little, compared to the import of Russian books. But I hope that the number of exported books will grow with each year. Our country’s participation in international forums, like the Moscow, Warsaw, and Frankfurt book fairs, is helping to popularize Ukrainians book throughout the world.”
Last year Ukraine applied to be the guest of honor at the Frankfurt International Book Fair in 2012. During the 21st Moscow International Book Fair, Vladka Kupska, a representative of the Frankfurt Book Forum, met with the head of the Publishing and Press Department at the State Committee of TV and Radio Broadcasting, Valentyna Babyliulko. In Kupska’s opinion, Ukraine’s book stand at the Moscow Book Fair meets the high standards of international book forums.
Ukraine should start getting ready for the book forum in Germany right now. Unlike Russian readers, Germans are interested in German-language books, so during the next four years Ukraine should prepare a number of German-language publishing projects.
“I am convinced that Ukrainian books will start appearing in Europe,” said Ukraine’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Russia Kostiantyn Hryshchenko. “It is just a question of time. But there should always be Ukrainian books in Russia.”
