It is safe to say without any exaggeration that Sukhodrev Viktor Mikhailovich is considered a legend in the world of modern translators. At one time he was the personal translator of such cult personalities for the Soviet Union as Gorbachev, Brezhnev, Kosygin and Khrushchev. For almost thirty years, he performed his professional duties, being present next to the country's top leadership at closed international meetings and negotiations that decided the fate of the world.
Childhood and family
Little Victor was born in December 1932. His family is very difficult to call typical and unremarkable. The head of the family - Mikhail Lazarevich Sukhodrev, worked at the GRU. He lived in the USA for almost 10 years, being there in the status of an illegal intelligence agent. Mother - Evgenia Alexandrovna, worked in the sphere of foreign trade of the USSR, namely in the Trade Representation of the People’s Commissariat. In 1939, she was appointed secretary to one of the Soviet branches, which was located in London.
First trip abroad
When the boy was only 6 years old, he, unlike most Soviet peers, was very lucky - with his mother, he was able to go abroad, to the UK.
It is known that children adapt to the new atmosphere much faster and easier than many adults. The same thing happened with the six-year-old Vitya - in London, he mastered very quickly. Most likely, the boy had an innate tendency to learn foreign languages, which at the time of his finding and communicating with direct native English speakers were especially pronounced.
Little Victor, while his mother was busy all the time at work, became very friends with boys of his age, the local postman and neighbors. He learned English in a natural way, becoming able to speak it simply as in his second native language.
It was originally planned that after a business trip, Sukhodrev Viktor Mikhailovich, together with his mother, would take permanent residence in the United States, to his father. But these plans were violated by the outbreak of World War II.
Thus, Viktor Mikhailovich Sukhodrev, whose biography was largely determined by the military events that took place in the world in the 40s of the XX century, remained with his mother in Great Britain until the end of the war.
The future translator of Brezhnev, Kosygin, Khrushchev and other top officials of the Union at the age of eight was engaged in interpretation for the leadership of the school, which was located at the Soviet mission, and in which Victor began his studies.
Teaching foreign languages at a university
After the war, Viktor Mikhailovich returned to Moscow with his mother. He graduated from secondary school and for higher education decided to enter the Military Institute of Foreign Languages. An interesting fact is that a person who has been engaged in Russian-English simultaneous and consecutive translation all his subsequent life has chosen the French branch for study. But there is actually a very simple explanation for such a decision - the Moscow Military Institute, together with all its best theoretical teachers, could not teach Victor, who had been studying English in practice for several years, something new.
Many years later, becoming an adult, Viktor Mikhailovich Sukhodrev learned that after he successfully graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages, he, as a truly valuable shot, was very wanted to recruit in the GRU. Old acquaintances of his father in intelligence turned to him with a similar proposal, but, knowing all the specifics, complexity and ingratitude of such work, Mikhail Lazarevich answered them with a sharp and categorical refusal.
The first experience as a translator at the highest level
Viktor Sukhodrev is a well-known translator who, after graduating from the institute, joined the Foreign Ministry in 1956. His really brilliant and lightning career is largely due to the fact that at that time in the Soviet Union there were practically no people who were able to live abroad and freely practice a foreign language to such an extent that they could speak it on the same level with native speakers. Thus, Sukhodrev Viktor Mikhailovich became a kind of unique.
Since even such bilingual translators were extremely rare in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the young man was literally immediately identified as a personal translator for the country's top leadership.
On his first working day, Sukhodrev was sent to accompany Khrushchev to his informal meeting with an Indian attorney. The young man coped with this task perfectly. Since then, he became known as Khrushchev's personal translator.
Work difficulties
Khrushchev can safely be called almost the worst option for starting a career as a young translator. After all, it was he who owned such verbal pearls as “Kuzkina mother” and “we will bury you”, which later became known to the whole world. Such expressions of some terrified their spontaneity, while others were amused and amused by simplicity. But such statements, requiring immediate adaptation and translation in such a way that their meaning was understood by foreigners, could translate any translator into a heart attack. Sukhodrev had an innate talent to quickly and correctly find a way out of such situations.
Regarding this ability of a young man, one of the Central Committee secretaries, Frol Kozlov, once said that with Victor it is never scary to attend various meetings and events, because if you say something stupid, he will always correct everything with dignity.
Rare qualities that made Sukhodreva indispensable
Viktor Mikhailovich can be seen in many photographs that captured really important for the history of the meeting of the Soviet leadership with the heads of various states. We can safely say that this man had, albeit a modest, but still influence on the course of history.
Largely on the ability of the translator to find the correct verbal equivalent of a particular expression spoken in different languages, what opinion develops about the speaker depends. And Sukhodrev brilliantly coped with this task. For example, after
Khrushchev ’s first
visit to the United States in 1959, thousands of ordinary Americans fell in love with Nikita Sergeyevich. To say that Sukhodrev adapted and translated his speech into English, of course, would be superfluous.
But in order to become a translator of this scale, in Soviet times, perfect knowledge of a foreign language was not enough. A natural sense of tact, knowledge and perfect command of business etiquette, a thorough understanding of the international political situation - this list is also far from a complete list of what helped Viktor Mikhailovich to get into the history of translation. According to the rules, he always had to be at a distance of no more than 1 meter from the person with whom he was supposed to work as a translator.
At the same time, he was able to remain truly invisible, an invisible man who, for all his significance, did not attract too much attention and did not distract from the main speaker. Regardless of how long the negotiations last or if an informal meeting continues, the translator is always obliged to be assembled and concentrated as much as possible, and Sukhodrev always succeeded. He realized that a translator is a person who simply does not have the right to relax and make a mistake at the wrong time, since it is sometimes very difficult to correct a misunderstanding at the level of heads of state.
Difficulties of technical consecutive translation
It is also worth noting that Sukhodrev had to translate negotiations and meetings on completely different topics. And in order to properly conduct a conversation, for example, about nuclear warheads, you need not only to know the technical translation of the terms, but also to understand the essence of the subject that they are talking about.
Knowing that he would have to translate at a meeting with a similar topic, Victor always carefully prepared and studied the most delicate details of missile defense systems or, say, strategic offensive weapons. It becomes undeniable that the intellectual development of a person capable of understanding such subtleties should have been much higher than average.
Best-selling Memoirs
After the most popular translator of the Soviet Union retired, he decided to share his colossal experience, which could be useful not only to his colleagues, but also to a simple layman. The book (memoirs) he wrote was published in 1999 under the title “My Language is My Friend”.
She immediately became a real bestseller, because even those people who did not have a professional interest in the intricacies of translation were interested in reading the recollections of a person who worked shoulder to shoulder with many prominent people such as Brezhnev, Khrushchev, Kosygin and who had the opportunity to attend meetings with
M. Thatcher, D. Kennedy, M. Ali, I. Gandhi.
Even after retiring and moving away from belonging to matters of state importance, Sukhodrev did not allow himself the freedom to give any political assessments of the events that he had to witness as a duty. In his book, he shares only interesting facts and describes various habits, weaknesses and characteristics of the powerful.
Hobbies and hobbies of Viktor Mikhailovich
Like any outstanding person, Sukhodrev had his own hobby - all his life he collected pipes for smoking. Important is the fact that all the exhibits in his collection should have been necessarily working, the decorative models of the collector were not interested. He was very proud of the pipes that were made by the famous St. Petersburg master Fedorov. Sukhodrev considered one of his most important exhibits to be a pipe made by the world famous company Dunhill, which he was presented at one of the meetings by Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of Great Britain.
In addition to collecting tubes, this person was always attracted to reading. Since Viktor Mikhailovich spent his childhood in England, at a fairly early age he had the opportunity to read the original works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Conan Doyle. As an adult, Sukhodrev started one hobby habit - when there was a free minute, he was very fond of reading the Bible. At the same time, Viktor Mikhailovich took two versions of the book: in Russian and English. Reading the biblical lines, he tried to mentally immediately translate all the expressions, and if he had any difficulties, he opened the second option and checked the translation. All his life Sukhodrev considered the Bible to be an ideal example of high-quality translation, since this book was translated into all languages of the world, and at the same time its meaning was not lost.
Sukhodrev Viktor Mikhailovich: personal life
This man has been officially married three times in his life. His first wife was a very beautiful woman, the famous Soviet actress Inna Kmit. Remembering this relationship, Sukhodrev once noticed that she and Inna got married at a fairly young age, and over time, the difference in views made itself felt, the couple broke up.
The second wife of Victor was Inga Sukhodrev, who also had some relation to the movie. She was the daughter of actress T. Okunevskaya. Inga herself worked as an English teacher and from her previous marriage with David Lipnitsky, she already had a son, Alexander. Sukhodrev adopted the boy and treated him like his own son until the end of his days, despite the fact that the marriage with Inna herself broke up 7 years after the beginning of their life together.
Least of all is known about the third and last wife of Viktor Mikhailovich. There is only information that in the past she was a teacher of English. At the time she began living together with Viktor Mikhailovich, the woman was already retired.
The death of the main Soviet translator
This man, who had the chance to live a really interesting and extraordinary life, died at the age of 82. The death of May 16, 2014, the press reported his adoptive son, Alexander. Sukhodrev Viktor Mikhailovich, whose cause of death was not disclosed to the general public, is buried in the Aksinsky cemetery.