It is hard to find an idea more discredited than banning books. Yet that didn’t stop the Ukrainian government from doing just that: banning the sale and import of books it finds harmful.
Since 2017, Ukraine decided that all books imported from Russia need to be checked for harmful content by the State TV and Radio Council.
The books are considered harmful if they contain anti-Ukrainian propaganda, such as justifications of Russia’s war against Ukraine, glorification of Russia’s state or “imperial” ideas about the unity of Russian and Ukrainian people. We don’t support any of these ideas. Probably everyone who isn’t a Russian chauvinist agrees that they are reprehensible.
But banning books is not going to stop these views. This is the 21st century. Anyone can get any book in 30 seconds using just their phone.
More importantly, the concept of banning books smells of dictatorship, state propaganda and the whitewashing of history.
The absurdity was highlighted as the latest list of the banned books emerged earlier in January. Its contents raised many eyebrows.
Apart from one or two books by notoriously anti-Ukrainian figures like a high-profile Russian priest Vsevolod Chaplin, the list included unexpected entries.
There was historical fiction by Russian author Boris Akunin, a critic of the Kremlin who lives in self-imposed exile in Europe, several memoirs and diaries of the Russian empire’s aristocrats, and “Stalingrad,” a work by British historian and best-selling author Antony Beevor.
Beevor told the Kyiv Post that his book made it to the list because of one World War II episode, in which Ukrainian militia executed Jewish children on Nazi orders. The expert council told him the book was banned because he used a Soviet source. Beevor denies it, saying the source was German and well-respected. He wants an apology. For a historian, this must be a peculiar experience: seeing a country that aspires to be a progressive democracy go into the Dark Ages business of book banning.
In this new world, ideas can’t be stopped. Only a genuine, unfettered competition of ideas will lead to the truth. We encourage Ukraine to always choose truth through encouraging debate, rather than stifling it.
