Libraries in Ukraine

Ukrainian library shelves during 2023

  I have just discovered this blog, written several months ago, had not been published. I noticed it languishing when I read about the Portico Library in Manchester about which I had never heard, and about which I wanted to blog! Obviously, my eyes were sensitised to the word, ‘library’. Thus this Ukrainian library lament is now to be published followed by the yet-to-be-written one on the Portico.

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 Belarussians 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 Welensky, being Jewish.

Chernihiv State Archives
NKVD and KGB information is stored here; 
uncomfortable for Putin.

In this obsessive drive to keep Ukrainians ‘Russian’, Putin, from the Feb 24, 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.

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.” Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s President, countered Putin’s fiction in his powerful speech to the European Parliament last year, insisting that a strong Ukrainian identity not only existed but was now 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 chosen future in Europe. Russia, under Putin, wants to continue the old Soviet system when force created an 'empire' in the Soviet bloc; Ukraine is moving on, Westwards, requesting membership of NATO.

Anatoli Khromov, Head of Ukrainian State Archives.
Described as a 'warrior librarian.'

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 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.

Sheltering in the Metro.

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% digitalised 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 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, almost two years 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 throughV
cultural, physical and emotional genocide.

The strong identity of the Ukrainian people and their furious national courage as they defend their

Irpin's library offers refuge during post-Russian
bombing of civilian areas.

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 proclaimed patriotic duty! A large number of conscripts have 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 current 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.

Meanwhile, 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

Vadym Skibitsky, Deputy Head, Defence Ministry
Intelligence Directorate.
Now also General in Ukrainian army.

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.

Volodymyr Zelensky