Talk:Petr Shelokhonov

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[edit] Native spelling

I am not sure that the Belarusian spelling of his name is correct.

I am not an exceptional expert in Belarusian, but as far as i recall, one word can't have both е and о, because only one of them can be accented.

So i think - not sure - that it is supposed to be Пятро. Again, please correct me if i'm wrong.

By the same logic - Шэлахонов can't be correct, because there can be only one о.

Also, if his native language is Ukrainian, maybe Ukrainian spelling should be included too. --Amir E. Aharoni 08:42, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Amir E. Ahroni. You are welcome to make your correction. Phonetically your version sounds right, that is how I remember hearing his first name pronounced by people from Belarus, albeit when in Ukraine, he was called Petro, and while visiting his cousins in Vilnius he was called Pyatras, when he was in Poland they called him Petr, my friends from US and Canada called him Pete (Peter), my Spanish and Latino friends called him Pedro; so we are the world. I also agree with proposed correction in spelling of his Belarusian name and adding his name in Ukrainian. I've heard various pronunciations, but his original birth sertificate was destroyed in the war when his home was burned by air-bombings and then was leveled by the Nazi tanks. He received a duplicate in Russian, after the war, sometime before I was born in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). Both his Russian-language birth sertificate as well as his Soviet passport issued in Leningrad had his nationality as "Belorus" (based on his birthplace), so his rich cosmopolitan ancestry was completely ignored by the Soviets. I am now restoring his life by bits and pieces, he spoke little about his traumatic experiences, but that experience is written all over his face and it is also expressed in his roles. Your thoughful touch and your further participation is highly appreciated. Regards, Steveshelokhonov 21:27, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
It is very interesting to learn that your father was so multilingual and multicultural and not just "Soviet Russian".
My proposals of spelling are based on my very rudimentary understanding of Belarusian spelling rules. As far as i know, every word can have only one of those letters - о, ё, э, е, although there might be some exceptions to that rule. So Шэлахонов is unlikely, because it has three of them. Also, names which in Russian are spelled in -ов are usually spelled with -оў or -аў in Belarusian. Therefore, Шалахонаў or Шэлахонаў are more likely. Likewise, Пятро is an "educated guess".
I speak Russian, but i don't really know Belarusian. Please try to find out the correct spelling.
It would be better if someone who really knows Belarusian well made these corrections. --Amir E. Aharoni 07:57, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
First name could be Пётр/Пятро/Пятрусь/Пётра. Middle name Ларыёнавіч/Ларывонавіч. Last name: Шэлахонаў/Шалахонаў. Sorry, Google didn't find anything about this person on Belarusian, so I don't know which variant is correct. --EugeneZelenko 14:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! + see comment on your talk page. --Amir E. Aharoni 14:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, Amir E. Ahroni and Eugene Zelenko. Your help is highly appreciated. Steveshelokhonov 21:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
He was not a "Soviet Russian", his ancestry was multi-ethnic and multi-cultural, what the Soviets later would label as "cosmopolitan" with a negative tone. His ancestry included Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Polish, Jewish, Belorussian and probably other ethnicities and nationalities from Eastern Europe and Baltic States. His father was born under the Tsars, then married his mother, Anna Minska (or Hanna Minski, she was from Poland), after the Russian revolution, when the Soviet chaos was growing bigger. It is very hard to give a simple answer now, because his original records were destroyed in WWII, then after the war, the Soviets issued him a replacement ID when he reached 16 in 1945, and that ID was in Russian, it was politically biased, of course, and it did not represent his original identity, just as other things Soviet, and that was under dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. So his post-war Soviet passport was just a temporary ID, and his post 1991 new Russian ID was no better. I am still trying to find out more. I know that he was an open-minded person with a big heart. Steveshelokhonov 21:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

"Пятро Ларывонавіч Шэлахонаў" - this sounds right for a Belarusian variant of his name, it also sounds similar to what I heard from Belorusians when they spoke to him; Ukrainians called him Petro, but most often people called him Петя, and he also liked being called Peter, Pete or Пит, since he was listening to the Voice of America and other English language radio stations, Pete was also his name in the family - we always called him Пит. Other variants of his birth name are hard to find, because his birth sertificate and all family records were burned with his house during air-bombings and then ashes of his home were destroyed by the Nazi tanks. He could also farshteyn a bisele Yiddish, thanks to his mamele. His Jewish friends addressed him "Шалом Шалoхон" at several parties during the 1990s, albeit he was very shy about speaking Yiddish himself, mainly because of his trauma in WWII and his survival experience under the Nazis. He was fluent in Ukrainian, and also could speak Polish, and a little bit in Lithuanian, German and English. He could say a few English lines for his film character, he also could to say a few words in English to Sophie Marceau and others, while filming Anna Karenina, but for a longer conversation with actors and directors off-camera he used interpreters. He could use a little bit of his German, when he visited Berlin. He was impressed with the city; at that time he expressed himself saying "Victory is not about winning wars, and destroying enemies, it is about ending wars in your head." he said this to his friend, actor Kirill Lavrov, and in the presence of others, and I was proud of my Papa.Steveshelokhonov 21:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shelokhonov and his ancestry

His farther had a cousin, named Georgy Akimovich Shelakhov (1899-1987). Georgy Shelakhov survived the great terror under Joseph Stalin. During the WWII he was the Deputy Chief of Staff in the 1st Red Banner Army, stationed in Moscow and moved a lot during the war. After the war, in 1945 he was treated unfavourably by the Soviet leadership and was sent to Siberia, there he served as a Deputy Chief of Staff 1st Far Eastern Front. He retired in the 1960s. Petr Shelokhonov met him in the 1970s and they maintained communication, until General Shelakhov's death in 1987.Mouse2mouse 21:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Petr Shelokhonov's grandfather, Tito Shelokhonovich, had a brother, Akim Shelokhonovich whose son, Georgi Akimovich (Гоша), changed his name from Shelokhonovich to Shelakhov during the 1930s (many people changed their names for reasons of personal safety). He made a career during WWII rising to Maj. General in 1945; then he was sent on a risky mission to Kharbin, China, where Japanese experimented with bacteriological weapons [1]. On August 18, 1945, Gen. Shelakhov declared ultimatum [2] to General H. Hata, Chief of Staff Kwantung Army, then Marshal Vasilevsky accepted capitulation of Japanese in China. Petr Shelokhonov met his uncle in the 1970s, when Gen. Georgi Shelakhov was writing memoirs in his retirement (he did not publish his memoirs until the late 1960s). Steveshelokhonov 08:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Shelah (Шелах) is the grandson of Shem, and great-grandson of biblical Noah, Shelakhov (сын Шелахa) means Shelah's son (in Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian and Belrusian). Steveshelokhonov 08:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] English and Russian articles and the multi-language issue in Wikipedia

We are all trying to improve on the multi-language issue in order to achieve a better match between English and Russian versions of this article, as a start. We are also working on further improvements and editing of this biography in order to achieve a match between Russian, English, German, Spanish, French, Ukrainian, and other translations of his article.

This English article was only a 20% match with its Russian original in May and June, but in early July it was already about a 70% match with the Russian original, and we are gradually improving on small discrepancies in order to close the gap. I believe that improvements may be done through discussion and creative editing, like a thoughtful surgery, in order to save healthy parts for preservation of the whole. While we all know that no translation or interpretation is absolutely perfect, still it is really nice to come closer.

In Wikipedia multi-language issue is a visible problem, many articles look and read quite different in different languages, as I mentioned in my discussion for St. Petersburg. We are doing the same with several other articles, but it's hard to correct because not enough people understand all various languages involved, including myself. Anyone fluent in several languages, if you could help with this issue that would be great.

A multi-source and cross-cultural environment is naturally conducive to multiple interpretations and some reasonable contradictions as essential part of its growth, thus inching closer to resemble The Big Reality. Interpretations of reality as well as translation between languages does stimulate human creativity; albeit in this conundrum you cannot make everyone happy, but civility helps.

After this biography becomes better in several languages, I am planning to give more attention to multi-language issues in other articles too. Steveshelokhonov 22:57, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] English and German articles

Dear Wikipedians,

Ich abe etwas Deutsch in der Schule erlente, aber ich spreche English besseres. So I made a first effort translating the English article to Deutsch, using Sherlock translation and adding some of my own corrections. My Deutsch leaves much to be desired, so any help from fellow Wikipedians is highly appreciated.

Mit freundlichem Gruß, and highest regards, Steveshelokhonov 19:34, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Petr Shelokhonov, and the culture of hidden treasures behind the official Russian façade

Petr Shelokhonov, and the culture of hidden treasures behind the official Russian façade. By Fred Andresen, author of "Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia."


What has always intrigued me about Russian culture and history is how under a thousand years of autocracy and dictatorship, such amazing men and women have emerged. There is a painting from Soviet times that illustrates this. Across a bleak land a black paved road stretches straight to the horizon, a dark silhouette of a modern high-rise city. Pushing up through the cracks in this clearly untravelled road are leaves of grass and budding flowers. Those vibrant plants reaching for light through the cracks represent the great writers, poets, composers, painters, filmmakers, and other men and women of the performing arts. We know the names of a many, but there were and are so many more who kept being creative under the pressure from the Soviets, and their humble work kept the culture alive. Petr Shelokhonov was one of them.


On my first trip to the then Soviet Union in 1991, I marveled at these artists in the secret lofts, their crumbling dachas, or just the privacy of the kitchen table, and what they were happily doing in the ruins of the Soviet Union – these budding plants. We know the strife of these champions of freedom. The work of writers and actors got focused attention from the Soviet guardians of their power. I have managed a business in Russia since 1992 and lived there for six years. I have met more than few of these often surviving humble greats. In St. Petersburg in 1996, I walked by a horse-carriage with a woman and other actors in 19th century dress standing about. It was the filming of “Anna Karenina” in which Petr Shelokhonov was cast. His best known film role was co-starring as Cossack Severian in a three-hour epic film Dauriya. Only a few of his films are available today, while many other works did not survive the turbulent years of Soviet and Russian regimes.


His acting career started during the Nazi occupation in WWII when he was making parodies of Hitler and the Nazis to lift the spirits of his fellow survivors. After the war he was drafted in the Red Navy and was actor with the Theatre of the Baltic Fleet, then continued acting in Siberia. In many roles he had to play a Soviet officer, or a revolutionary and did so with tongue-in-cheek as he also listened to the opposite side, such as the BBC, Voice of America, and other international sources. It was his love of freedom that led him to take the death-defying chances necessary to assure his acting career, and to create a range of characters marked by truth, depth, and beauty.


Photographs of his stage roles show a variety of characters displaying nuanced emotions and a remarkable range. We Americans often don’t appreciate the cultural under-structure of the rest of the world. European, Russian, Asian, African, and Mediterranean peoples live with a highly original, rich, and multi-dimensional world of a vertical culture, while many of as in America live in a horizontal culture. We are all immigrants. But in the rest of the world, the centuries of language, geography, religion, and resulting social, political, and economic strains make them who they are. Petr Shelokhonov was surely one of these with a long heritage in Eastern Europe and Russia.FAndresen (talk) 21:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)