When Library Turned Arsenal
On killing as the ultimate act of censorship, and how western instutions can help Ukrainians fight against the erasure of Russia's making.
I wrote a piece ‘When Library Turned Arsenal’ about destroyed Ukrainian libraries for Index of Censorship which you can find in their latest issue. I am grateful for the publication — and for a chance to feature one Ukrainian perspective alongside four articles on Russia and two on Belarus. When it comes to censorship, looking for dissenters in a dictatorship seems to be the prescribed direction of travel for observers in the west. Ukraine — a country which rose against dictatorship and is being massacred for this very act — doesn’t fit the bill.
Ukrainian writer turned war crimes investigator Victoria Amelina commented on this paradox in April 2022: ‘Western intellectuals are looking for good Russians to “save” from bad Russia — perhaps because ‘saving’ Ukrainian artists is much more difficult’. In June 2023, Amelina was killed in a Russian missile strike on the city of Kramatorsk. The ultimate act of censorship is not ‘cancelling’. It’s killing. PEN Ukraine’s incomplete list of Ukrainian cultural practitioners killed by Russia since 24 February 2022 encompasses more than 80 names and is growing daily.
Victoria Amelina was with us on the trip which provided me with material for my piece about the destruction and resistance of Ukrainian libraries under Russia’s culturecide. I clumsily mention her death in my text. And yet, my article in the Index of Censorship contents is followed by the title ‘Shot by both sides: The Russian writers being cancelled’.
I believe that none of the Russian writers in question was actually shot by the occupants, buried in a mass grave, fatally wounded in a missile attack, or killed in action while fighting against the invaders. These things are happening to Ukrainian authors, literally, at the hands of Russians. I am writing this on the day when Kyiv has said its last goodbye to the 33-year-old poet and soldier Maksym Kryvtsov who was killed on the front on 7 January.
My initial draft of ‘When Library Turned Arsenal’ was longer and contained some tips on what western institution could do to help Ukraine fight against erasure. I’ll post the part that was not accepted for publication below.
Ukraine does not need to fight alone.
In the west, with no danger of being shelled, drowned, or buried under the rubble, librarians, archivists, and educators have to double the efforts to preserve and cultivate Ukrainian heritage which Russians seek to extinguish. While the new series of creatively conceived, elegantly printed, and sophisticated books have been emerging in the country fighting an existential war, western libraries still often misrepresent this country’s culture with a display of mole-eaten Soviet artifacts.
Fighting for Ukraine’s victory means confronting the image of Ukraine as the Camporum Desertorum, the so-called 'deserted fields' from the historical maps of Guillaume de Beauplan. Encountering the vast, windswept, and wild Ukrainian steppeland, the seventeenth-century cartographer gave it the mythopoetic name which Russia seeks to turn into the twenty-first-century reality. We must counter this false image of emptiness and ensure that library collections outside of Ukraine reflect Ukraine’s publishing renaissance which preceded Russia’s full-scale invasion, as well as the rich history of Ukrainian publishing and printing. Amidst Russia’s genocide, we must populate our shelves with evidence of Ukraine’s thriving and resilient culture.
Fighting for Ukraine’s victory means aiding Ukraine in the process of reclaiming its heritage from Russia’s entrenched imperialist narratives. Books on Kazymyr Malevych — a Kyiv-born artist of Polish descent — have been placed in the ‘Russian art’ section for decades. However, the longevity of this taxonomy flaw should not prevent us from fixing it. Meaningful solidarity with Ukraine demands overcoming western institutional lethargy.
Fighting for Ukraine’s victory means facing the fact that Russia has been weaponising the west’s reading and collecting habits for decades. It is genocide o’clock. Yet the Russian propaganda which called this genocide into being, is displayed on western library shelves without context. In the decades preceding the invasion of Ukraine, and particularly after the success of the pro-European, democratic Revolution of Dignity, the Kremlin has developed genocidal claims described succinctly by Timothy Snyder: ‘there is no Ukraine; no Ukrainians; it is all just part of Russia, or invented by Russia, therefore to be claimed and controlled and, if necessary, annihilated by Russia’.
Western bookshelves often reflect these claims uncritically by displaying Russian volumes such as Ukraine and the Rest of Russia; Ukraine is Russia; The Suicide of Ukraine; The Fascisisation of Ukraine; and so on. Whereas one might have good reasons to study Mein Kampf, Hitler’s writing should not be placed on open shelves without content warnings, let alone in the Jewish Studies section. The place for Russian propaganda is on a dedicated Russian propaganda shelf.
In the next post, I will share a list of gorgeous Ukrainian books you should order for your university library. I am not in London anymore but this work has to continue.