Withdrawal of books to a special fund as a repressive library practice in Under-Soviet Ukraine

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Zubko N. N. № 2 (88) 183-181 Image Image

The publication aims to draw attention to the problem of the destruction of Ukrainian identity and the eradication of national identity by removing the books ideologically undesirable to the Soviet authorities from public, scientific and literary circulation, which nevertheless represented adequately the Ukrainian culture and were supposed to contribute to its development. Instead, the Soviet functionaries limited the influence of such publications through strict censorship and bans, as well as imposed their own vision of history and Russian identity through controlled means of social communication.

Special funds — separate secret divisions of libraries — were used as a means of discrimination and isolation of the national book heritage from users on the grounds of its «ideological harmfulness». This department was established in Lviv branch of the Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (now — V. Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv) in May 1940. Its example reveals the repressive library practices that resulted in the removal of works of «enemies of the people», emigrant and foreign publications with content that contradicted the ideological postulates of the Soviet government for a long period of time.

The article reviews the main proscribing lists that regulated the withdrawal of publications to the special storage department of V. Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv. The author focuses on the work of censors who identified «ideologically harmful» books by reviewing their content and highlighting offensive phrases in the text; recorded the grounds for isolation on the title pages, summarized in a kind of verdict stamps, among which the most common are: «nationalist», «anti-Soviet», «occupation», «Catholic», etc. Recommendations for further research on the repressive bibliocidal policy are proposed.

Keywords: special storage fund, V. Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv, repressive library practices, book banning, censorship of the printed word.

doi: 10.32403/0554-4866-2024-2-88-183-200


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