Eero Balk: Our elders warned us that the KGB might try to recruit us

Eero Balk is a renowned translator of Ukrainian literature into Finnish. His connection with Ukraine dates back to the 1970s, when, as an international student, he was sent from Moscow to Kyiv to study Russian. In 1995, he returned to Kyiv with the goal of learning Ukrainian. His translation efforts have introduced Finnish audiences to works by Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Yuri Andrukhovych, Serhiy Zhadan, and Serhiy Rudenko. In recognition of his Finnish translation of Yevheniya Kuznetsova’s novel “The Ladder,” Eero Balk was awarded the 2024 Drahomán Prize.

In this new conversation, we will reflect on modern Kyiv and the Kyiv that no longer exists, on language learning, and on Finnish-Ukrainian relations.

Chytomo: Let’s start our conversation with the Finnish book market. What are Finnish readers interested in, what do they buy, and what is in demand? Does the continuity of Finnish literature influence contemporary literature?

Eero Balk: I think our readers’ tastes have changed over the last ten to fifteen years. They now prefer Finnish literature over translations. In my view, Finnish writers have begun to write in a more engaging way, whereas in the past, literature was largely shaped by established traditions, especially historical prose. I say this not as a literary expert but as a reader and observer because I’ve noticed that I now read more Finnish literature than I did twenty years ago. To me, Finnish literature today feels more open and connected to the wider world.

This year marks the anniversary of a Karelian-Finnish heroic epic “Kalevala,” and one of our writers who loves to write thick analytical books, Juha Hurme, has published a new work [called] “Kalevala.” I haven’t read it yet, but I think there is room for a new reading of an ancient myth. The thing is, people are now more aware that “Kalevala” is not an authentic text, but it shows us Finns a lot. I am personally interested and moved by this epic, this worldview. It was written during a period of epics being collected and of national revival. We simply wanted to show that we have something of our own, that Finland is a modern civilization, [and] that we are not savages, not peasants. We also have something valuable.

Chytomo: In my opinion, this resonates with what you said at the beginning about how contemporary Finnish literature is experiencing a renaissance and is now more open to the world and discovering new themes. How about Karelia, the birthplace of the “Kalevala”? Is this region—previously annexed by the Soviet authorities—represented in literature today, if it is represented at all?

Eero Balk: So much has been written about Karelia that I don’t know what’s coming out now. There are writers who emigrated from Soviet, Russian Karelia. They are still writing and have a different experience from the rest of the Finns. There are many aspects to prose about Karelia. One of them is universal: the experience of evacuation to Finland. Not all of them were Finnish, by the way. There were Karelians who spoke the Karelian language, which was not recognized in Finland, so [it’s] only now [that] we can talk about a kind of revival of this language. Although this should have been done in the 1940s.

As a little boy, I lived surrounded by refugees from Karelia, but I didn’t understand anything the old women were saying. Now there is the first Karelian-speaking kindergarten, but back then there was no infrastructure for refugees. “Become Finnish,” they were told, “and everything will be fine.”

Chytomo: When learning about your experiences in Kyiv, an essay “The Fourth Kharkiv” by Yurii Shevelov comes to mind. You have seen different Kyivs: Soviet Kyiv, Kyiv when Ukraine had just regained its independence, and modern Kyiv. Do you separate these periods in your mind when you think about the capital of Ukraine?

Eero Balk: I am not sure I can provide an assessment, but in 1975, when we first arrived at the end of August, our initial impression of Kyiv was that it was a southern city. It was a large city, but somewhat provincial and quiet. To get to and from home we had to travel through Moscow, and it was completely different there. It was easy to get lost, unlike in Kyiv. I really regret not taking more photos of the city to remember those times. In fact, people are inclined to think that things will always be the way they are now. That’s not true.

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Then came the early 1990s. By the time I arrived, it was already the end of the coupon (the karbovanets, also colloquially known as kupon—Ukrainian currency back then) era. I would describe that period as ruin. Everything old had crumbled, and something new was trying to take shape, but it was hindered by a group of people who seemed determined to exploit the country and make life difficult for the people. That was my impression.

After that, I didn’t visit Kyiv for quite a long time. As soon as I got there, [which was] right after the Orange Revolution, I noticed that things had changed compared to the 1990s. I came with a friend of mine, and they fell in love with Kyiv. They had stomach problems [that] completely disappeared in Kyiv. The food is just the way it should be. I also noticed that the service became more friendly—there were more young people working, who already had a new attitude toward life. The Soviet attitude of “don’t bother me while I’m working” from saleswomen when you asked them something had disappeared. At that time, I also visited Moscow once, where this old attitude still flourished. “Excuse me, what’s the filling of these buns?” “How should I know? I didn’t rip them open.”

Last year, I was in Kyiv during the full-scale war. I could not imagine what life in Kyiv was like, but it turned out that things were somewhat calmer when I arrived. There were some disturbances, but I did not run to the shelter and did not see any destruction. Despite everything, Kyiv has become a better place. It’s very pleasant to live in this city; there are things to do, places to eat, and places to just drink coffee. People need to have these islands of normal life, even in bad times. I think Kyiv is even better now than Helsinki.

Chytomo: The Ukrainianization of Kyiv is also very noticeable. It may not be rapid or linear, but one can definitely feel it.

Eero Balk: True. After I learned Ukrainian—I have been familiar with Ukraine for thirty years—I haven’t spoken Russian. There dominated narratives about the oppression of Russian speakers, but in my experience, I never saw any oppression. Everyone can respond to me in Russian, and if I continue to speak Ukrainian, the conversation becomes bilingual. I do not think anyone minds.

I always observed a strong hostility towards the Ukrainian language. In the 1970s, during my studies, it was very noticeable. However, over time, this intolerance gradually diminished. In fact, I don’t recall hearing Russian being spoken in Kyiv last spring. I’m sure it was still used, but it was on the fringes. Even if a taxi driver speaks Ukrainian, that’s already a great change.

When I moved to Kyiv for a year in 1994 to learn Ukrainian, my colleague, who was also studying in Kyiv, turned to me and said, “Are you out of your mind? Everyone speaks Russian here.” I understood that this could be the case, but when I was preparing to go to Ukraine, I didn’t expect that absolutely everyone would speak Ukrainian. Now that colleague is very proud of me.

Chytomo: I know you translated “Bogomazov in Finland. A Century Later” (Rodovid, 2023) by Nataliya Teramae, which traces the artist’s footsteps in Suomi (“Finland”). How about Eero Balk’s footsteps in Kyiv?

Eero Balk: Unfortunately, due to rampant construction, Kyiv has changed a lot. Overall, it’s the city center: Saint Volodymyr Hill, the Golden Gate, and further on to Lviv Square, a little off the downtown. It’s very interesting there. Also, Lesia Ukrayinka Boulevard, if you go from the Besarabsky Market. There are the very interesting Pechersk Hills there. I really like Holosiivskyi [National] Park and this forest, and VDNG, because our dormitories were nearby.

When I was still studying, the old Podil district was still intact, before the subway was built and everything was dug up. I remember being told that it was quite dangerous in the evenings, and mostly frequented by criminals. I can’t say it was truly dangerous, but I do recall some very shady bars. Although a lot has changed since then, I think the area still carries that reputation from earlier years, when it was a popular spot for sailors and other shipping workers.

I want to tell you about one more place that probably no longer exists. At the beginning of Velyka Vasylkivska Street (then Chervonoarmiiska Street), there was a small bookstore. In 1978 or 1979, a foreign bookstore opened there. You could find pocket editions of Penguin Books there, which were very expensive, so I bought one a month. Opposite was the Kholodok (“Chill”) café.

At that time, it was a weird situation with coffee in Kyiv. In cafés, it was of poor quality: weak, often diluted with milk, and already sweetened with sugar. However, if you were looking for good coffee, there were several places in Kyiv where you could get an espresso, or what they called a “double half.” You had to wait for it, but once you got it, you could sit in the Kholodok. It was always very hot in the Kholodok café because of the old espresso machine that emitted clouds of steam. That place was my little escape from Soviet life: sitting at the table, sipping coffee, eating cake. It didn’t matter that there was only one type of cake—I’d eat it and flip through the pages of an English book. It felt as though the Soviet Union didn’t even exist.

I presented the last book I bought in that bookstore to Serhiy Zhadan when he was in Helsinki, because he said somewhere that Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” had greatly influenced him. I had this book, bought in Kyiv for Soviet rubles, and I gave it to Zhadan.

Chytomo: You are actually Zhadan’s translator into Finnish, but the first text you worked on was “The Enchanted Desna” by Oleksandr Dovzhenko. How did you decide that you wanted to translate this particular work?

Eero Balk: In Kyiv, I was looking for literature to translate, but books, especially new ones, were hard to find in the city at the time. Only old editions were available. The publisher A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA had already been founded, and I bought their first book “The ABC.” Folio Publishers also appeared in Kharkiv, and they published a thick book of selected works by Dovzhenko, which included “Enchanted Desna” and “Diaries.” He is known primarily as a director, but “Enchanted Desna” is a wonderful work that, in my opinion, should be read. I was also struck by the contrast: when he was writing “Enchanted Desna” in Moscow and couldn’t come to Ukraine, he wrote in his work, “Oh, my lovely Ukraine! Sunny! Wonderful!” But in his diaries, he described the reality: “Moscow. Harsh. Dark.”

I contacted Yevhen Sverstiuk, a Ukrainian literary critic, essayist, poet, intellectual, philosopher, and participant of the Sixtiers movement, and asked him to write the foreword. He replied, “It would be wonderful”. It was 1995—the victory of democracy, or so it seemed. But he was being watched. Or maybe I was. No idea.

I remember calling him from a pay phone—it was free since I had coupons but no coins left—and we agreed to meet, but somehow we missed each other. I had been waiting in the wrong spot, though a group of people with cameras had already gathered there to film something. The next day, we met a bit earlier than planned and went to the courtyard of his office. Suddenly, a Russian-speaking stranger ran up to us and asked, “Why did you leave earlier?” When we had gone inside, Sverstiuk said, “Security Service of Ukraine, just like the KGB, but they don’t kill anyone anymore.”

In the spring of 1995, just before May 9 (celebrated as Victory Day during the Soviet era) President Leonid Kuchma addressed veterans and said that “Stalin was the most significant and greatest figure in Ukrainian twentieth-century history.” The very next day, during a visit to Kyiv by Bill Clinton, Kuchma told him, “We are a modern democratic state governed by the rule of law.”

Chytomo: Did you feel this totalitarian pressure when you were in Kyiv during the Soviet times?

Eero Balk: Yes. Senior students warned us about what might happen, but no one followed us around constantly. It was a different story for the Canadian students who came for a Ukrainian language internship.

There was no Internet or social media back then, so the police kept physical files with photographs. One day, I saw one of those files. We were officially on a tour in Kharkiv, but we got lost and asked a police officer for directions. He took us to the police department, opened a large folder filled with photos of prostitutes and black marketeers, and started comparing us to the pictures.

Once, at the train station, I got scared. I was leaving Kyiv and noticed that someone was following me and taking pictures, and I even thought that I would never return home, that something would happen to me. Later, I realized that they were taking pictures to keep in those folders.

We had supervisors, and a lot of Russian language and practical classes. Our main university teacher was young and very nice. She didn’t keep an eye on us. But one year there was another one, and every time, at Easter or Christmas, she would “accidentally” come into the dormitory, then “accidentally” knock on the door and say, “Hi there! I just wanted to see how you were doing.” That is, she wanted to find out if we were performing any religious rituals there.

Senior students warned us that we could be recruited. There was an attempt to recruit me. It was the KGB, and I understood that right away, and somehow managed to dodge them. I couldn’t refuse outright because I had heard rumors that if you didn’t agree with them, they could get on the plane when you were leaving and take your diploma away. I just didn’t open the door when I saw through my window that the KGB agent was coming again. It was very stressful, I never felt one hundred percent confident because I realized that everything I did or said could have consequences. Not like for Ukrainians, of course. We weren’t that important.

Chytomo: In that context, did you feel that learning Ukrainian was a form of decolonization protest?

Eero Balk: My first arrival to Ukraine wasn’t planned. We, the students, thought we would be studying in Moscow and learning Russian, but we were sent to Kyiv.

I only came to Ukraine to study Ukrainian after the country regained its independence. And then I stopped using Russian altogether. For example, I bought Ukrainian-Czech dictionaries so that my brain would not create connections between Ukrainian and Russian. Recently, on Suspilne media, I heard the story of a Russian-speaking young man who switched to Ukrainian and noted that excluding Russian was his language diet.

One of our teachers from the preparatory faculty of Russian phonetics had experience in removing the influence of Finnish phonetics on Russian, because you cannot simply switch from the Finnish sound “L” to the Russian or Ukrainian “L”—you have to approach it from a different angle and relearn articulation. This principle works in many other areas, not just phonetics. If I, as a Finn, want to learn Ukrainian, I also need to approach it from a different angle, and I did so through the Czech language.

Chytomo: What was your first Ukrainian word? Anything that particularly stuck in your memory?

Eero Balk: During the preparatory course, when we still couldn’t tell Ukrainian and Russian apart, we came across Ukrainian words used in everyday situations all the time. Probably the first word I really noticed was pererva (“break”) because it meant we could escape from class. There was a radio in the room, so phrases like khai zhyve Pershe travnya (“Long live May Day”), hovoryt Kyyiv (“Kyiv is speaking”), shosta hodyna, try khvylyny (“six o’clock, three minutes”) stayed with me.

Chytomo: When it comes to translations, have you ever had any funny moments at work?

Eero Balk: When I was translating “The Enchanted Desna,” I encountered a number of “rural words.” I consulted an ethnographic dictionary, which contained rarely used or obsolete words, but it was not possible to find anything immediately. I had to simply flip through the pages to come across something I was looking for. I am a city dweller, but I have a strong dialectal background, which helped me and from which I was also able to draw on.

Chytomo: Is there a text you would really like to translate?

Eero Balk: Oh, I surely do. I would like to translate the novel “Black Raven. Leftover” by Vasyl Shklyar. Usually, if you want to read something about the Ukrainian Civil War or the early years of the Ukrainian Republic, there are only books from the perspective of the victor — the Soviet Union: Isaac Babel’s “Red Cavalry” or Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The White Guard.” So there is nothing to read in Finnish about the Ukrainian perspective on these events, only the memoirs of our first ambassador to Kyiv. Yes, he wrote that those were turbulent years in Kyiv. That is true, but it is a documentary, and we lack the human experience conveyed and analyzed through fiction. We need at least one book.

I would also like to translate Shklyar’s “The Key” or “Elemental” — something like that, something dark and criminal.

Chytomo: The context of translations from Ukrainian into Finnish is more diverse. In particular, a Finnish translation of Sofia Andrukhovych’s novel “Amadoka” is being prepared. As someone who has been working in this field for quite a long time, do you notice demand or interest in Ukrainians among Finnish readers? What is it that they don’t know yet, and what do they want?

Eero Balk: It isn’t easy to say exactly what readers want, because there are publishing houses as mediators. They might have their own ideas and plans about what is interesting and what will sell. It’s a business. I’m not sure that everything that is published corresponds to what people want to read.

Translations of books about the war are in demand now. I am currently working on a book by Valerii Zaluzhny. I am finishing the translation of “A Brief History of a Long War of Ukraine with russia” by Mariam Naiem, Yulia Vus and Ivan Kypibida.

I am happy that Andrukovych’s “Amadoka” will be published—it is the first sign that people are being offered something that does not tell only about this terrible war. It is nice to see new translators appearing. I also have a new commission—a collection of fantasy stories called “The Thickets of the Milky Way”—and three translators, including me, are working on it. The person translating Andrukhovych will be the fourth translator, so there are people with experience in translation. Three years turned out to be enough to learn Ukrainian well enough to work on translations.

I have no information about how Ukrainian language studies are going in Finland right now, but after the outbreak of the full-scale invasion, there were Ukrainian language courses in almost every village.

Chytomo: Do you think this intercultural rapprochement helps to get rid of stereotypes established by the USSR?

Eero Balk: Let me note that not all stereotypes were negative. Finns also had positive stereotypes about Ukrainians. Long before the full-scale invasion, there was a stereotype that Ukrainians were very hard-working, unlike the lazy and dishonest Russians. That is why, [starting] twenty years ago, the Finnish authorities made an exception for Ukrainians, allowing them to enter the country for three months without a visa for seasonal agricultural work. As a result, people already had prior arrangements to arrive in May-June, so in February 2022 they came immediately and had a place to live, and the Finns helped them.

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Chytomo: With his new movie “The Fallen Leaves” (2023), Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki highlighted the renewal of ties between Ukraine and Finland. In his film, news from Ukraine—regularly heard on the radio—holds a central role. Although Kaurismäki had previously announced his retirement from directing, it seems the full-scale invasion deeply moved him, both as an artist and as a person, prompting his return to filmmaking. Could his personal experiences be the source of this empathy?

Eero Balk: Of course, almost every Finnish family has some memories of the Soviet-Finnish War, which gave rise to a whole genre of historical novels. Tuntematon sotilas (“The Unknown Soldier”) by Väinö Linna is one of the key novels of Finnish post-war literature, which has been republished and adapted for the screen again and again.

I don’t have any personal experience, as my father didn’t fight in the war. My grandfather probably did, but I never knew him. However, my godmother was an assistant in the Finnish army and lived in Petrozavodsk for almost three years during the Finnish occupation. She talked about some of her experiences, but kept quiet about others.

Finnish families have a lot of intergenerational pain. And after the war, you had to live cautiously, because Finland had lost the war. We had a Soviet commission checking libraries, so it was impossible to express this pain, and if anyone did, they did so cautiously. After the outbreak of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, people probably instinctively understood that now they could work through this pain.

Chytomo: Ukrainian-Finnish connections have lasted longer than three or twenty years. The Ukrainian translation of “Kalevala” was made by Yevhen Tymchenko in 1901.

Eero Balk: You are right. For some time, Ukraine and Finland were part of the same empire, and certain contacts had already been established. In particular, the first translation of Ukrainian literature into Finnish was published in 1914. It was Marko Vovchok’s “Marusya,” translated into Finnish as “Marusya, the Heroic Girl from Ukraine,” but this translation was not made from the original, but from French.

During World War II, we fought two wars with the Soviet Union. We had few allies, and only later, during the second war, the Karelian campaign, did Germany become our ally. At that time, an information bureau of the Ukrainian National Assemly (UNSO) was established in Helsinki, headed by an extremely active leader, Bohdan Kentrzhynsky, who came from Rivne and was a Polish citizen. At that time, many books on Ukrainian history were published in Finnish and Swedish, as well as hundreds of articles.

After the war, Kentrzhynsky left for Sweden with the archives of this center, because a Soviet commission arrived in Finland. Since he had lived in a territory that did not belong to the USSR before the war, after the war he was officially considered a Soviet citizen, which he had never been. He had to return. Our authorities were not very active in returning people, but they did return them. That is, they announced the need to leave, but there were no cases of people being transported by force.

His son has a Finnish name—Matti Kentrzhynsky. He works as a director for Swedish television. People from the UNSO information bureau remained in Finland, but they kept quiet about being Ukrainian—if the Soviet embassy had found out, it would have meant their downfall. Today, however, if you want to find out more, you can go to a university library, where all these sources that were removed from the collections after the war but not destroyed are now available.

Sometime in the 1970s, there was an initiative in Finland to publish a library of Soviet literature, in which all the major publishing houses took part. The editor was Russian writer Serhiy Zalyhin. I think ninety volumes were published. There is only one story from Ukrainian literature in one volume. Forty or fifty million Ukrainians in the USSR and only  one story.

It was a work by Hryhir Tiutiunnyk, but it was difficult to recognize it because the Finnish translation was not done from the Ukrainian original, but from a Russian translation. And his name in the translation sounds like Grigir Tiutiunnik. He was still alive at the time and probably found out that he turned out to be Grigir, not Hryhir.

It should also be mentioned that Shevchenko was translated in Karelia, in the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Most likely from the Russian translation, but still. This was done for propaganda purposes.

And finally, I would just like to wish for peace on the Finnish-Ukrainian border in the future (laughs). After all, during Kyivan Rus, we had a common border, and Rus stretched all the way to Karelia. Since those times, thanks to trade, we have preserved the word riuna to refer to the hryvnia. So someone from our people must have visited ancient Kyiv.

Translation: Iryna Saviuk

Copy editing: Matthew Long