These 14 books, on history, literature, theatre, the 2014- Russian war against Ukraine, law, and broader geopolitics, came to us in late 2023 and have just been catalogued. Their iDiscover records (linked to further down) will be shown in their updated form late in the morning of the day after this is posted.
Category: Slavonic
Ukrainian book culture : the December 2023 Slavonic item of the month
Our last Slavonic item of the month for 2023 is a newly purchased ebook about the history of books and printing in Ukraine. Z istoriï knyz︠h︡kovoï kulʹtury Ukraïny [From the history of the book culture of Ukraine] looks at items in the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. It contains the following 4 main sections, which contain a total of 15 chapters. I give the 3 chapters that fall under the all-important library section. Continue reading “Ukrainian book culture : the December 2023 Slavonic item of the month”
Christmas/winter traditions in Ukraine
Our 2021 Christmas blog post looked at the Ukrainian vertep, a centuries-old tradition of telling the Christmas story through puppet theatre. This very brief post looks at two 2022 books received this year about Christmas in Ukraine, including one about vertep.
Changes to Ukraine-related bibliographic subject headings
Every month, the Library of Congress publishes new additions and changes to their subject headings (LCSH). The October 2023 list of approved changes focused on Ukraine, and this post gives a quick summary of them. They all relate to the events of 2013 and 2014 onwards, to the present day.
Continue reading “Changes to Ukraine-related bibliographic subject headings”
Language-sword : the November 2023 Slavonic item of the month
This month, the Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics Faculty Library and the UL received their copies of the 2023 book Mova-mech : i︠a︡k hovoryla radi︠a︡nsʹka imperii︠a︡ [Language-sword : how the Soviet empire spoke] by I︠E︡vhenii︠a︡ Kuzni︠e︡t︠s︡ova. The book had been requested by the Language Teaching Officer in Ukrainian at the Faculty, and the libraries had agreed to buy a copy each.
The 374-page book contains 87 short chapters covering the history and various aspects of Soviet language policy and its effect, including on Ukraine and Ukrainian. The book’s table of contents can currently be seen as snapshots on the publisher’s page for the title. Continue reading “Language-sword : the November 2023 Slavonic item of the month”
10 years on : a look at the Maidan Museum
This week saw the 10th anniversary of the start of the protests on Maidan Nezalez︠h︡nosti (Independence Square) in Kyïv against President Yanukovych’s sudden shift away from a closer formal relationship with the EU. A few months ago, our English collections lead, Rebecca, bought a new book by Dr Giovanni Ercolani about the memory and interpretation of the events that started in 2013, called The Maidan Museum : preserving the spirit of Maidan : art, identity, and the Revolution of Dignity.
Continue reading “10 years on : a look at the Maidan Museum”
The Ghost of Kyïv and other new books
A quick post today about some Ukrainian books that arrived just this week.
World War One and Ukraine
Today, Remembrance Day, we look at a few books about Ukraine and the First World War.
Ukrainian ties with Western Asia
Given the recent move to bring our colleagues in the Department of World Collections in as blog partners, I thought it would be nice to look this week at a couple of books looking at historical Ukrainian diplomatic and trade links in areas covered by that department’s Near and Middle Eastern section. Continue reading “Ukrainian ties with Western Asia”
Dovzhenko in the files of the secret services : the October 2023 Slavonic item of the month
Another newly added title to the catalogue is a 2-volume set of sources from Soviet secret service archives about the filmmaker Oleksandr Dovz︠h︡enko. I’ve written before about our holdings about Dovz︠h︡enko (eg here) but this new arrival is a significant addition and warrants its own blog post.
Oleksandr Dovz︠h︡enko : dokumenty i materialy spet︠s︡sluz︠h︡b (2021), compiled by Roman Rosli︠a︡k, contains the texts of original Ukrainian and Russian documents kept by the secret services on the director. It’s an extraordinary resource, with the two volumes between them running to over 1,350 pages, and including a variety of sources such as internal memos and transcripts of tapped telephone conversations as well as transcripts of information from informants and other formal documents. The publisher has uploaded on their site the full contents pages for volume 1 and for volume 2. For those studying Ukrainian film and Dovz︠h︡enko in particular, the two volumes provide a surreal parallel timeline of the investigations into the filmmaker to be studied against his real life and work.
The Ukrainian journal Krytyka published a review of the set by Anna Veselovska, in which she refers to the fact that the date with which volume 2 ends (1989) comes long after Dovz︠h︡enko’s death (1956); while the files otherwise end in 1955, the final entry is a query about destroying the file as having “neither operational nor historical value” [wording from the review]. Like Veselovska, we should be glad that the suggestion was never acted on. This set, as others like it, sheds light not only on the subject of the files and those around him but also on world of the state apparatus watching him.
Mel Bach