<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/22/ukraine-clandestine-book-club-defies-russia-push-rewrite-history>
"It must be one of the most dangerous book clubs in the world. Before they can
feel safe enough to talk about poetry and prose, 17-year-old Mariika (not her
real name) and her friends have to first ensure all the windows are shut and
check there is no one lurking by the flat’s doors.
Informants frequently report anyone studying Ukrainian in the occupied
territories to the Russian secret police. Ukrainian textbooks have been deemed
“extremist” – possession can carry a sentence of five years.
Parents who allow their children to follow the Ukrainian curriculum online can
lose parental rights. Teens who speak Ukrainian at school have been known to be
taken by thugs to the woods for “questioning”.
That is why the book club never meets with more than three people – any extra
members would pose further risk of being discovered.
Apart from the danger, there is another challenge: finding the books
themselves. In the town where Mariika lives, the occupiers have removed and
destroyed the Ukrainian books from several libraries – nearly 200,000 works of
politics, history and literature lost in one town alone.
So Mariika and her friends have to use online versions – careful to scrub their
search history afterwards. The authorities like to seize phones and computers
to check for “extremist” content.
Among the poems and plays Mariika’s book club likes to read are those of Lesya
Ukrainka, the 19th-century Ukrainian feminist and advocate of the country’s
independence under the Russian empire.
In 1888 Ukrainka also formed a book club, in tsarist-era Kyiv, at a time when
publishing, performing and teaching in Ukrainian was banned. Ukrainka’s works,
in turn, explore the 17th-century struggle of Ukraine for independence from
Moscow.
In the dramatic poem
The Boyar Woman, the heroine chides a Ukrainian nobleman
who has come under the cultural influence of Muscovy and praises a humiliating
peace with the tsar that has “calmed” Ukraine: “Is this peace,” she asks, “or a
ruin?”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
