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The Ukrainian Library Association was supposed to be holding a conference this week, but something came up. Books, that define the culture of a nation, are always at risk when war breaks out. A note on the association’s Facebook page explains, “The insidious, brutal and bloody aggression of the Russian Federation prevented us from realizing our plans.”
In “The Library: A Fragile History,” Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen write, “Libraries had always been a target of conquering armies.” Although Russia is a signatory of the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property, Vladimir Putin’s bombing of civilian targets in Ukraine aligns with his claim that it’s not a real country. As a former KGB agent, he’s just following the empire’s old playbook. In “Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century,” Rebecca Knuth observes, “The Soviet Union, in the interest of extinguishing national identity among its constituent nations, was guilty of some of the most egregious cultural destruction.”
We sure hope that that libraries survive the onslaught taking place in Ukraine.