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Ukrainian names renamed to Russian in inappropriate, harassing bulk edits
When I first started to regularly hang out on IMDb Community Forums trying to help out with assorted problems, there was this thread by @piznajko, which was one of the catalysts. Right now the problem from this thread returned in spades, since it's a part of cultural clash between Russian Federation and Ukraine with latter trying to erase our whole existence by, for example, replacing Ukrainian names with Russian ones.
It's true that due to decades of Russian colonial policies and then Soviet Reign, a lot of people in Ukraine have a sort-of habit of having two names: one in Ukrainian and one in Russian, with the latter being a very approximate "translation" (via finding names analogous in etymology). It stared to quickly fall out of fashion to have two names and especially to use transcription of your Russian name as a main name in English credits and in press (I myself stopped using "Nikolay" and switched to my proper Ukrainian name - Mykola). It is also true that those filmmakers who worked in the Soviet Union likely had credits under their Russian name and that also extends to modern times somewhat since from 1990's to 2010's decreasing number of Ukrainian actors indeed worked in Russian cinema.
However, to put the situation into perspective, Rutger Hauer is not renamed "Rutger Khauer" just because he appeared under that variant in Russian films and the same thing should logically apply to Ukrainian actors and their Russian names/transcriptions, too. That and it's a an organized attack on our cultural heritage and a very conscious attempt to try and unlegitimize as a nation. Which will undobutedly and spectecularly fail, but that's besides the point. Although to be honest, considering a lot of renaming goes to people who don't even have Russian credits at all, perhaps a better analogy would be that Bolaji Badedjo is not listed as Boris Badenov on IMDb simply because Russians want to see the world as their own and everyone a Russian. The scales of how harmful, harassing and hateful some of those 'corrections' are is really somewhere near this absurd.
Right now someone very actively started to rename Ukrainian actors and filmmakers on random, mostly modern titles into their Russian counterparts which they may or may not have. I first noticed that with Mykhailo Illenko, whom I was able to already revert back from Mikhail Ilyenko, however the problem turned out to be way, way worse than that. Firstly, a lot of names from the aforementioned case pertaining Storozhova zastava (2017) were yet again renamed to Russian names (eg. Oleksandr turns into Aleksandr, Andrii and Andriy to Andrey, Yevhen to Evgeniy and so on). Secondly, this concerns a lot of titles from 2010's and was seemingly done in bulk.
I would've just tried my best at correcting all the names myself, but I hope that IMDb staff will be able to restore the names in a less time-consuming fashion and/or terminate the account(s) responsible because there's no doubt that all of the edits can be raced to a handful of accounts, or even account.
Here is just a portion of names recently renamed to Russian (there are very likely much more, it's just what I was able to find and compile after scanning recent theatrical releases for a few hours):
There are already cases of mistaken attributes because people start to correct the mess. For example, Volodymyr Hurin was reverted to his name by someone, ticking the box to preserve the alternate name erroneously, which resulted in him having erroneous attribute "(as Vladimir Gurin)" on this movie.
Accepted Solution
Bethanny
Employee
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5.6K Messages
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58.9K Points
2 years ago
Hi MykolaYeriomin-
After thoroughly investigating each name, we have not found any malicious activity/intent behind any. I recommend submitting the applicable name corrections (as I have seen you did for some already).
Cheers!
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piznajko
172 Messages
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5.1K Points
2 years ago
I can confirm the issue described by @MykolaYeriomin of names of Ukrainians in English being massively renamed to use incorrect Russian-language-based transliteration (as opposed to correct Ukrainian-language-based transliteration).
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