PARIS, June 9, 2022 (EIRNS) – According to an article recently published by Interfax Ukraine, the country’s largest news agency, in what is nothing less than an act of cultural genocide (and national suicide), Oleksandra Koval, the head of the Ukrainian Book Institute, said that more than 100 million copies of “propaganda books,” “including books for children, romance novels and detective stories,” as well as Russian classics like Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, will need to be removed from Ukrainian public libraries.
She said, regarding how long this removal process will take, “Of course, we want to do it faster, but it would be good if at least the ideologically harmful literature published in Soviet times [generally in both languages], as well as Russian literature of anti-Ukrainian content, were completely withdrawn by the end of the year.”
According to Interfax, we are talking about the removal from public libraries of “books with anti-Ukrainian content with imperial narratives and propaganda of violence, pro-Russian, chauvinistic policies.” Then, “the second round of seizure will include books by contemporary Russian authors published in Russia after 1991. And, probably, different genres, including books for children, romance novels, and detective stories. This is an obvious requirement of the times. Although I understand that they can be in demand,” she said.
When asked if this process involves the removal of the so-called Russian classics she said, “We all read these books, in my school years there was a solid Russian classic, which was considered the pinnacle of world writing. Due to the fact that we had a fairly average knowledge of the world classics, many were left with the conviction that this is really the kind of literature without which it is impossible to develop intellect and aesthetic sensations, to be an educated person. In fact, this is not so.” In her opinion, it was precisely such Russian poets and writers as Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevsky who laid the foundations of the “Russian world” and Russian messianism: “This is really very harmful literature, it can really influence people’s views. Therefore, my personal opinion is that these books should also be removed from public and school libraries. They should probably remain in university and scientific libraries for specialists to study the roots of evil and totalitarianism,” Koval emphasized.
Interfax also reports that [former Ukrainian media manager] Oleksandr Tkachenko, since 2020 Ukraine’s Minister of Culture and Information policy, suggested that Russian propaganda books withdrawn from Ukrainian library funds “could be used as waste paper.”
It is useful to remember the poet Heinrich Heine commenting on the burning of Hebrew literature in Germany in 1821:"Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also.” https://ru.interfax.com.ua/news/general/834154.html