Books Are Being Burned
A book being burned (image source: Wikipedia Creative Commons)
On May 30th, 2024, the International Book Arsenal Festival opened in Kyiv for the second time since the beginning of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The festival is a celebration of Ukrainian arts, humanities, and literature, and features over 200 Ukrainian publishers as well as international guests and visitors.
Since its inception in 2011, the goal of the Book Arsenal Festival has been to “integrat[e] the Ukrainian book and literary community with the international one.” This concept takes on a whole new level of international importance now as a direct opposition to the rhetoric of Putin, who claims that Ukrainian culture and literature does not exist.
According to the initial definition proposed by Raphael Lemkin in his formative book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, genocide is a “coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups,” including “disintegration of political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.” In other words, destruction of culture is a genocidal action, and books are literally an arsenal. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian people’s interest in Ukrainian-language books and books by Ukrainian authors has doubled, while the Russian federation has been quick to rewrite their history books in order to paint the invasion of Ukraine in a heroic light.
The significance of Ukrainian literature is likely the reason that just before Book Arsenal opened, Russia dropped a S-300 missile onto the Factor Druk printing house in Kharkiv, which is both one of the biggest printing complexes in Europe and a key producer of Ukrainian books.
Seven factory workers perished in the flames, and at least seventeen more were injured. About fifty thousand children’s books, novels, textbooks, and other works of literature went up in flames.
Factor Druk’s production accounted for about 30% of Ukraine’s printing market, so about one in three Ukrainian books was made there. In addition, about 40% of Ukraine’s textbooks were printed at Factor Druk. Without them, it would be harder for students to study the accurate history of their country: they can’t rely on the internet with Russian soldiers attacking their Wi-Fi and power grids, especially because Russian textbook and media portrayals are completely, laughably false.
With Book Arsenal just around the corner, destroying Factor Druk was a painfully effective way to limit the publication of Ukrainian literature. About a thousand Ukrainian books have been published and first distributed at the festival in the thirteen years it’s existed. But as production of these books gets harder and harder, the publishing market shrinks and Ukrainian firms struggle to cover the costs. Many firms even had to postpone publishing, because production abroad was too expensive of an alternative.
“This bombing was not accidental but a deliberate strike against the Ukrainian desire to be themselves, to read Ukrainian literature, to reclaim their names, and nurture new talents,” stated Ukrainian World Congress Vice President Nataliya Poshyvaylo-Towler. “It was an attack on current and future generations of readers and writers, on fairs and book festivals. The enemy is using bombs to force Ukrainians to read Russian, to prevent them from breaking free from the shadow of the ‘Great Russian culture’.”
The photographs of Factor Druk’s remains are jarring, to say the very least. Dystopian, even. The wealth of knowledge contained in those books could be a safe space, a cultural haven, or a rally to action for hundreds of thousands of potential readers. But as Factor Druk struggles to recover from the damages, fighting continues in Kharkiv.
Just seven days after the Factor Druk bombing, the Book Arsenal festival opened about 300 miles away from where the factory once stood. Its theme? Life on the Edge: a reflection of wartime experiences and richness with which Ukrainian literature is its own form of resistance.
by VERONIKA MOROZ