Culture under seige.

 

Putin's objective

Cherniv Library for Youth in earlier glory

 Disturbed to have confirmed that a key part of Putin’s strategy vis-a-vis the invasion of Ukraine, is to eradicate the Ukrainian sense of identity. He openly questions the legitimacy of Ukraine’s contemporary borders, arguing that Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussions are one people, sharing a common heritage and destiny. The decisions of the Ukrainian Government now are driven by a Western plot against Russia and he labels the Ukrainian governmental personnel as Nazis in spite of its leader, Volodymyr Welenskiy, being Jewish.

..... and, aerial shot, after Russian bombing.

In the
obsessive drive to  keep Ukrainians ‘Russian’, Putin, from the Feb 24^th 2022 beginning of the invasion, has set out to destroy historic libraries and archives in Ukraine. In an Observer article of 4/12/22 by Stephen Marche, the huge efforts of Ukrainian librarians and their staff throughout the country are outlined as they have focused on protecting their books and archives at all costs. Libraries and archives are a nation’s cultural life blood, at least as important as other aspects of a nation’s identity and, indeed, are foundationally and intricately bound up with all                                                                        the other elements.

President Volodymyr Welenskiy who has experienced a
profound change of life, from popular actor
to leader of a nation at war.

Three days before Putin invaded, he publicly declared that Ukraine is a fiction, entirely created by Russia and without the stable traditions of real statehood. Ukrainian identity was an attempt by the West “to distort the mentality and historical memory of millions of people.” Welenskiy, Ukraine’s President, countered Putin’s fiction in his powerful speech to the European Parliament insisting that a strong Ukrainian identity not only existed but was European in nature, not Russian. So the war seeks to reclaim its own territory and people, in Russian terms, while the Ukrainians’ struggle is to define their past as well as forge their way to their future in Europe.

Anatoli Khromov,
Head of State Archival Services

Russians targeted libraries immediately in this existential struggle. The first was at Chernihiv where sensitive NKVD and KGB information about Soviet-era repressions and killings which Russia wanted erased, were stored. They continued to destroy archives in Bucha, and in Ivankiv, in Mariupol and Volnovakha, in Irpin and Borodianka, setting what has become a steady and destructive pattern. Meanwhile, archivists and librarians throughout the country, under the leadership of Anatoli Khromov, Head of Ukrainian State Archives, have removed, hidden or transferred archival material elsewhere, often abroad. By May 2022, a month after Russia's invasion,  an online survey by the Ukrainian National Library revealed that 19 libraries had already been destroyed; 115 partially destroyed and a further 124 permanently damaged, plus several thousand school libraries had also gone. By December 2022, over 300 state and university libraries had been destroyed.

One library which almost survived

Khromov labels this Russian destruction as cultural genocide and describes the Ukrainian resistance as “fighting for our national memory.” This has involved both the preservation of physical artefacts and the digitisation of archives that already exist. Pre-war, digitisation had been tiny in volume; the large State archives were only 0.6% digitised so momentum here has been rapid. The record is impressive. The war began on Feb 24^th and by the end of the first week in March, an organisation. SUCHO, [Saving  Ukrainian  Cultural Heritage
Online] had been formed with efforts combined efforts from the Ukrainian military and various international organisations and individuals, to effect widespread data rescue. By March 7^th, more than 1000 volunteers, furloughed from regular jobs, were working up to 12 hours a day. And now, eighteen months later, the war continues, and has developed into a massive Russian onslaught on the civilian population and a ceaseless bombardment to destroy as much Ukrainian infrastructure as possible. Putin’s plan is to effect total devastation on Ukraine through cultural, physical and emotional genocide.

Young Russians leaving their homeland

The strong identity of the Ukrainian people and their furious national courage as they defend 
their homeland against the Russian invaders, are undoubted and much admired. Ukrainian morale has remained strong in the face of frequent low morale shown by the Russians; tens of thousands of Russian young men have left the country rather than do their patriotic duty! A large number of conscripts have also fled. There seems to have been genuine misinterpretation by the Kremlin that the Ukrainians would not resist [and would, indeed, welcome, the Russians] and this failure to understand the distinction between the two cultures, has resulted, in a strengthening of the Ukrainian identity which will inevitably, be anti-Russian in the future. An irony indeed.

Russian conscripts fleeing mobilisation

Meanwhile, eighteen months of warfare continues; libraries are re-opening; personnel recruited; reading rooms are welcoming back citizens while the important distinctive cultural protection of books and archives, continues, thanks in part to Putin’s blindness to the cultural realities of two separate nations. The libraries are also demonstrating their ability to forge additional paths; libraries are now taken into hotspots when people shelter from prolonged bombing, as in Underground stations. Reading helps frightened people to cope. There is also a large upswing in requests to learn the Ukrainian language. Nearly one third of the Ukrainian population has Russian as its mother tongue and libraries are responding by sourcing Ukrainian language lessons for the rapidly increasing demand. This is a war over language and identity.

Sheltering ....