Car chases, shootouts, floods, escaping from an angry crowd, traveling through the jungle, where everything is teeming with predatory and poisonous animals... It sounds like the plot of another Bond movie or Indiana Jones! But all this is not a fictional plot, but real pages from the life of an extraordinary person, who a hundred years ago traveled to almost all continents - Sofia Yablonskaya. Ukrainian traveler, cinematographer and writer, ahead of her time. If she were alive today, she would probably be called a travel blogger with an audience of millions. But Yablonskaya was born in 1907 - and still gathered her “subscribers”.
Probably, Anton Ptushkin and Dmitry Komarov never even dreamed of such adventures that their senior colleague experienced! After all, in the 1930s the world looked completely different than it does today - less globalized, societies were more closed in their “bubble”, concentrated on their own culture. But the restless Sofia opened this world to Ukrainians, made it closer and clearer.
The daughter of a Galician priest, she revolutionized ideas not only about the traditional fate of a “priest,” but also about what a woman’s life could be like.. From her youth, she was attracted to everything unusual - she tried herself as an actress, photographer, model for painting, managed cinemas and hotels, developed house designs. But her travels, recorded and published in the form of travel novels, brought her immortal fame.. What was her secret to success
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Of course, first of all, this is her character - open to people, she easily got along with them and knew how to put even wary strangers in a friendly mood. I could easily start a conversation with Moroccan women by giving them beads and paper flowers. She persistently waited for the Vietnamese peasants to return from the fields in order to persuade them to take photographs with a smile and a kind word. This is despite the fact that the camera, as some peoples believed, “steals” a person’s soul. Sometimes the rattling of the camera caused panic among the natives, but Sofia’s sincerity and goodwill opened up to her even those places where Europeans rarely visited. Yablonskaya traveled without guides, on middle-class ships or sailing ships, and dared to go where even men did not always dare. She was desperate - once during a flood in one of the Asian countries she did not run away, but got into a small boat to relieve the consequences of bad weather.
Yablonskaya had an extraordinary talent for finding adventures in exotic places and then describing them in an interesting way.. Already during her first trip to Morocco she visited the desert and a harem. In China I saw executions with my own eyes, almost bought a child and even tried opium. She photographed women from Bali topless, which challenged the morality and Eurocentricity of the time.. In distant Polynesia, she visited the queen of the island of Tahiti, from whom she received the nickname “Teura” - “red bird”, probably for her bright character. Whether there was a piece of artistic conjecture here is not excluded, but even rigorous scientific research is no longer able to destroy the legend that the author has created about herself.
Yablonskaya also clearly defined her Ukrainian identity and target audience - namely her compatriots. Although all the circumstances seemed to be against: a Muscovite father, seven years of youth in the Russian outback, and then his whole life traveling. “Do you know that I haven’t read the Ukrainian language at all “- she will write in one of her works. But he will be drawn to Ukraine even from the most distant corners of the world.
Although most of Ukraine at that time was under Soviet occupation and was going through the tragic times of the Holodomor and terrible terror, a powerful center of free Ukrainian speech still flourished in the west of the country. Therefore, it was in Lviv newspapers that her first short letters and notes about travel began to appear.. They were filled with incredible sincerity along with subtle humor. It’s as if your best friend shared her most intimate experiences with you in a letter from a long journey.. For Ukrainians, these works became perhaps the first window into the most remote corners of the world - a kind of Discovery of the interwar era..
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And the public was grateful to their “influencer”, because at her creative meetings while visiting Galicia in between travels, she gathered crowds of admirers.
Sofia Yablonskaya’s notes in the popular Ukrainian magazine “Zhinocha Share” showed that this fate is not at all reduced to the routine of household affairs, but can be extremely exciting. It is no coincidence that conservative circles of the Galician lordship expressed displeasure that a woman, even without “proper accompaniment,” wanders around the world like some kind of tramp. Yablonskaya, on the one hand, continued the ideas of the older generation of Ukrainian feminists who defended the right to education, free choice of profession and partner. But on the other hand, Sofia went her own way, making her own dreams come true, and not the expectations of those around her. That's why I wasn't afraid of criticism. And perhaps that is why it is so close to the modern generation, for whom their own self-realization is more important than any slogans.
And, of course, there were always people next to Sofia who were ready to support her, even when no one had heard of the young aspiring writer. Publisher Elena Kisilevskaya began publishing Sofia's travel notes in her magazine. Literary critic Mikhail Rudnitsky took it upon himself to edit a collection of these essays, and even came up with an unusual name - “Char Maroka”. Modernist artist Roman Turin, a friend of the writer, painted the cover of the first edition, which very soon became a bestseller. Yes, Sofia had an unusual talent for uniting the best and most devoted people around her..
Colleagues and admirers did not avoid portions of criticism. The words of the writer Irina Vilde sounded most caustic when it became known that Yablonskaya wanted to take a break from traveling for a while in order to equip a new home and create comfort for her family.. “It’s a pity for you, Sofia, that you personally prepare dinner for your husband, embroider, plant flowers. There are enough Chinese for this,” Vilde said categorically.
However, the Second World War severed the strong ties that Yablonskaya had with her homeland. Contacts between Asia, where Sofia remained with her family, and Europe became extremely complicated. Lvov changed hands and finally found itself under Soviet occupation. Nationally conscious and at the same time cosmopolitan Yablonskaya did not fit into the Soviet ideological framework, and her name disappeared from Ukrainian literary life for a long time.
Even after Ukraine gained independence, its creative heritage did not immediately return home - preference was then given to “serious” dramatic writers. Although Yablonskaya’s “frivolous” works were not inferior in their patriotism and epicness, along with extreme humanity and sincerity.
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Yablonskaya herself moved to France after the war, because her beloved China and Vietnam also “blushed” under the communist regimes. But even here, in calm Europe, her restless nature did not give rest - she wrote several new works and professionally began decorating houses.
Even death found her on the road: in February 1971, the 63-year-old traveler and writer died at the wheel of her own car while taking a new manuscript to the publishing house.. Her creative legacy has been preserved by her descendants. Son Jacques-Mirco Houdin became a French senator. Nathalie Houdin's granddaughter now heads the Sofia Yablonskaya Foundation, which researches and popularizes the writer's legacy.
Unfortunately, you will not find documentaries or feature films about Sofia Yablonskaya, although such a rich biography deserves it. But on the Internet and in bookstores you can find her works - “Char Maroka”, “From the Land I Rise and Drink”, “Distant Places”, as well as photographs taken in different parts of the world. In both words and photographs, she preserved for us a world that had already disappeared a hundred years ago.. And she herself became an example of the fact that dreams come true, despite the circumstances, you just need to have a burning desire and unshakable willpower.