The Undoing of Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage

A nation’s literature binds its community together, quite literally. A nation’s record of its history contains its discoveries, traditions and understanding of the world around it. To erase a country’s past affects it’s ability to selfidentify in the future. War crimes such as book burning, and destruction of culturally significant material undermine national identity and even its ‘Founding Myth’. This is used as a powerful weapon, often applied in aggressive military tactics. The nature of this tool can be subtle or more pronounced.

Recently this trend has reappeared in the case of the Ukrainian invasion. Of course, national, and regional histories are deeply embedded in Ukrainian-Russian relations. The role of conflicting discourses of national or regional history, is often the very reason for the eruption of conflict, perhaps aptly seen with Palestine and Israel. In a sense this dichotomy is created when nations adopt their own narrative despite the objective reality of the given situation. Through this phenomenon, comes not only the ability to justify condemnation of Ukraine, but within this the deep and heavily set ideological assumption of Russian authority. This presumption about truth and fiction, right and wrong, ultimately can be seen to condone the oppression and attack of the Ukrainian citizens. Russian national myth and ideology centres so heavily around the idea of the ‘Motherland’ and entitlement surrounding post-soviet states, such as Ukraine, as a territorial right. Interestingly, the act of book burning in the Ukrainian invasion has been exercised in a slightly more embedded and less pronounced fashion. This falls back on an assumption of a rightful domination over Ukraine that is widespread, as opposed to the need for a more staged and publicised performance in adopting new ideas.

For this reason, the Russian government perhaps operates acts of terror like this in a slightly less theatrical and more clinical fashion than that of Nazi Germany. This is due to the foundations of Russian historical self-identity and educational understanding of the surrounding region, as mentioned, acting in his favour. Ideological dissemination through education, harbours a more widespread acceptance of the situation at hand with Ukraine by Russian citizenry.

Original reports of Ukrainian literature being set alight came in tandem with descriptions of the detention and torture of hostages, as well as raids of libraries especially targeting children’s literature and replacing these with Russian texts. Alexandra Xanthaki, Special Rapporteur on cultural rights stated the acts were “A violation of Ukrainians’ right to self-determination”. Some book-burnings were reportedly done in unison with other interrogation or detention techniques where hostages were forced to recite and learn Russian traditional literature. Aside from the horrific human rights abuses at play, the additional style of psychological conditioning illustrates the danger of this type of learned xenophobia, displaying the wish to not only oppress, but completely transform the Ukrainians on an individual level. These techniques didn’t simply reinforce the Russian historical narrative, or function as propaganda, but were utilised as a tool of ‘re-education’ brainwashing Ukrainian citizens. As would be expected, this psychological warfare has left a deep scar on the people of Ukraine. One detainee bleakly described their experience, stating “Besides torture, they forced us to learn the Russian anthem, read pro-Russian books.” Despite this method being used within a wider crusade of terror tactics, it perhaps is the most sinister fact, involving eroding the sense of identity one by one, book by book.

As the conflict continues, the amassing set of issues: economic, humanitarian and security, become harder to manage. The international help so far has come from regional and international bodies such as the EU, offering arms contributions as well as making use of aggressive sanctions. Alongside this the US, UK and other western actors including NATO, which Ukraine has been hoping to join, have been offering their support. However, with the international community centrally focussed on matters of global security, the landscape is increasingly complex. Security concerns such as the Russia’s hypersonic missiles and developing economic policies, such as unprecedented EU sanctions to destabilise the country are central focusses for international actors. However, human rights violations are to an extent side-lined and far harder to approach in a strategic framework. Many Ukrainians who have gone missing are believed to be detained or dead. In these circumstances individual war crimes have built up in the background of the overall focus of aid.

The specific case of book burning acts as an illustration of the cultural and national damage done by the Russian invasion and occupation. In its blatant erasure of the past, it puts the Ukrainian future in a state of struggle to rebuild the history dismantled and to manage the pain caused, leaving behind a dark legacy of this war in the years to come. Russia’s invasion not only attempted to tear down the walls of buildings but the very social fabric that has woven together the history of the Ukrainian people.