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This paper proposes translation as an approach to decolonizing Slavic Studies. As the repressed other of the monolingual nation-state, translation holds the potential to critically interrogate the ontology of the modern world order, which in Naoki Sakai’s terms, assumes a monolingual addressee. Through close readings of translation discourse, actual translations and works of transfiction—that is, fictional works portraying translators and translations—this paper outlines a set of critical reading practices through which to interrogate the political unconscious of the Russian, then Soviet empires.