We recently received and catalogued three of the four books published so far of Telegraf, a large-format edition about modern Ukrainian art and design.  The first, published in 2021, is called Ukraïnsʹkyĭ dyzaĭn (Ukrainian design), and we hold its second edition.  The third book, Voli︠a︡ (Freedom), was published in 2023; on the red page behind its carved cover are the words “abo smertʹ” (or death).  The fourth, from 2024, is called Zavtra (Tomorrow).  We hope to get hold of a copy of the second book in the series, called Kreatyv u viĭni (Creativity at war).

Cambridge seems to be the only UK library holding any of the Telegraf publications and the only European library west of Germany.  When I spotted them in an online bookshop, I was surprised that they hadn’t come up before.  It is a fantastic if rather poignant experience to handle them – the first book comes from a time of war but before the seismic full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, while the third book brings back a lot of the astonishing humour from the war’s first year or so, when memes about the cheerfully indomitable Ukrainian spirit (eg memes about Ukrainian tractors versus Russian tanks) were so popular.  “Are you from the Avengers?” asks the Marvel character shown here.  “No, I’m from the Ukrainian Post Office [Ukrposhta]” is the reply.

Voli︠a︡ also has a fantastic section about the Ukrainian letter ï which is a letter not shared with the Russian Cyrillic alphabet and therefore became a symbol of Ukrainian ongoing independence.  The section is introduced with the questions “Is it possible to describe war with words?  And if you could only use one letter?”.  There then follows an exploration of the history of the letter in typeface.

I hope that readers interested in Ukrainian creativity during the 2014- Russian war and particularly during the 2022- invasion will find a lot of food for thought and inspiration in these new acquisitions.  As and when we get a copy of the second book, we’ll update this blog post.

Mel Bach