A new report Russian Attack on Ukrainian Libraries, from the Luhansk Regional Human Rights Centre “Alternative“, quantifies the scale, and explores the consequences of, Russian army shelling of library infrastructure in Ukraine.

According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, as of 25th October 2023, 1,711 cultural infrastructure facilities in 262 territorial communities, covering 17.8% of all communities in Ukraine, have been damaged by Russian aggression. Russian troops have destroyed more than 200 libraries in Ukraine and damaged about 400. The estimated loss to the library collection is over 187 million items.

In the occupied territories, Russians are deliberately seizing and destroying Ukrainian literature that they consider “extremist”. Such literature includes school textbooks on the history of Ukraine, scientific and popular historical literature.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court qualifies crimes against cultural property as a type of war crime. According to Article 8 of the Statute, these include intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes or historic monuments.

As well as covering the military attacks on library buildings region by region, the Report also looks at the removal of material that does not fit the Russian propaganda narrative. It says: “The occupiers not only confiscate Ukrainian books, but also loot rare collections of old printed books. Before the liberation of Kherson by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in November 2022, the occupiers took priceless pre-Soviet publications from the Kherson Regional Scientific Library.”

The Report finds: “During the occupation of Irpin, the Russians vandalised and burned hundreds of copies of the Bible, taking the books outside and setting them on fire. In the cathedral of St. Petro Mohyla in Mariupol, the entire large library collected by volunteers and benefactors was seized and burned in the courtyard. It contained several unique copies of Ukrainian-language publications that are now lost forever.”

Elsewhere, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group reports that in occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, Russian-installed ‘education workers’ are removing and destroying works of Ukrainian literature. School books in Ukrainian are being replaced with ones that celebrate a ‘great Russia’.

The destruction of Ukrainian literature is part of a broader programme of cultural erasure, which includes the looting and destruction of museums. It is aimed at suppressing any sense of Ukrainian cultural identity. As previously noted on Labour Hub: “The dehumanisation of a people is a preparation for their physical extermination. The denial, destruction and dispossession of a people’s culture are a critical part of that process.”

Image: Russian bombing of a school in Kramatorsk, July 21, 2022. Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=421090610058834&set=a.293060042861892. Author: State Emergency Service of Ukraine, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.