Soldaterfiguren i ukrainske oversættelser af H.C. Andersens eventyr “Fyrtøjet” og “Den Standhaftige Tinsoldat”

This article shows how the soldier figure in Andersen’s The Tinderbox and The Steadfast Tin Soldier has been transformed through Ukrainian translation and reception from the nineteenth century to today. It situates early translations within imperial censorship (Valuev Circular, Ems Ukaz) and shows how Starytskyi’s 1873 version ideologically changes the soldier as moskalʹ. It then examines Soviet-era neutralization in Ivanenko’s translation, where the soldier becomes an ideologically acceptable “soldat” within a child-oriented canon. Finally, it argues that contemporary Ukrainian children’s literature reactivates Andersen’s soldier as a function of vulnerability, trauma, and ethical endurance under wartime conditions.