It's not often that the global search giant Google honors a Ukrainian with an electronic doodle on its home page, but today is a day like that.
On March 7 the search engine boasts the images
of several cartoon kozaks who are a familiar to every Ukrainian from their
childhood. The characters are the product of imagination of Volodymyr Dakhno
(1932-2006), an artist who would have turned 81 today.
The kozaks are his most famous characters,
stemming from a glorious page of Ukraine’s history, the Zaporizhya Sich, or
settlement of kozaks that dates back to the 15st century. Cartoons with kozaks
were released in 1967, and became a national symbol in Soviet Ukraine. But
their fame stretched all the way across the USSR.
There were nine episodes released with the kozaks’
adventures. The first one was called “How kozaks prepared kulesh (thick millet
soup),” and the ones that followed features names in the same styles, depicting
the everyday life of adventurous warriors.
The central characters are called Grai, Oko and
Tur, which stands for Play, Eye and Auroch. The names in the cartoon reflected
a cossack tradition of receiving names after character traits. Many surnames in
Ukraine can still be traced back to this tradition.
In the course of their adventures, the kozaks
travel across Europe and through time, play football and hockey, become friends
with French musketeers and aliens, fight against Tatar invaders, pirates and
even evil spirits. Cartoons are full of action but have no voice-overs, which
makes them easy to watch regardless of nationality.
A native of Zaporizhya, artist Dakhno lived
most of his life in Kyiv, working as an animated cartoonist. His degree was in
architecture, though. He created ideas and worked on more than 20 cartoons and
series. By the end of his life, Dakhno saw a decline in the national cartoon
industry because of lack of financing.
This is not the first time when Google
commemorates a Ukranian with a colorful Google doodle. On Dec. 3 it ran a
doodle in honor of the 290th birthday of the nation’s “wandering philosopher”,
poet, teacher and composer Hryhorii Skovoroda.
You can watch cartoons by Dakhno here
http://www.youtube.com/user/ukranima
Kyiv Post staff writer Denis Rafalsky can be reached at
[email protected]
