Russia bombed my publisher. Putin wants to erase Ukraine culture

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Lviv, UKRAINE – On May 27, Factor-Druk, my printing house, was hit by a Russian C300 missile. When I heard the news, I first felt desperately hopeful that there would be no victims. And then, immediately after, another thought: “What about the books?”

Seven Ukrainians died. They were people who simply printed books, the most peaceful of businesses. They kissed their children in the morning, drank coffee, had breakfast and came to work. And then they did not return home.

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The attack occurred just two days before our national holiday for book printers, publishers and distributors. And so that date became bitter and painful.

The books of many authors, my colleagues and friends, were burned — as was a collection I contributed to, Motanka.

Motanka is a very personal collection of stories authored by myself and 11 other female Ukrainian writers. We explored women’s wartime experiences through the prism of mystical and mythological fiction.

The story I had written for this book came to me after a prolonged creative crisis wherein, for a year and a half, I could not author anything. Without inspiration, I felt like an empty shell. And so this story was like a deep breath. Proof that I am still a writer.

Factor-Druk is the largest printing house in Europe — it’s in Kharkiv, an eastern city close to the Russian border — and it has continued to work under shelling, blackouts and constant air raids. In a country at war, books continue to be published.

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After the missile strike, though, they sent me the photos: piles of charred paper, black ash. Among the authors who lost their work were those who had put down their pen and taken up arms at the front.

When I saw the photos our burned books, I felt bipolar.

In Ukraine these days, we often say that we feel bipolar because we feel joy and pain together, at the same moment. I hug my grandmother and then I read of more death in the east. I sleep in a soft bed and eat a nice breakfast, while my friends on the front line sleep on the ground and have no morning coffee.

Though Motanka was burned, another book of mine — the Snowstorm — had just been shipped across the country from another printing house in Kharkiv. Readers were sending me joyful photos of themselves unpacking it. I felt so lucky. Two hundred copies of the book — kilograms of literature — were sent to me on the very morning when the rocket destroyed Factor-Druk.

For an author, meeting your book for the first time is a special and long-awaited moment. You put so much of yourself into it and it can be hard to believe that all these efforts could be condensed into a single, little thing that can be read in just a few hours.

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And as I met my book and then saw photos of the burned printing house, I asked myself, as so many Ukrainians do these days: do I have the right to feel happy?

During the war, we speak of the word “joy” in myriad ways — with relatives, friends, strangers, soldiers, volunteers, psychologists — and split it into atoms. You learn to accept being bipolar. Now it was my book’s turn.

It may seem that books are just paper: what difference does it make which language they are written in? They are just books. But then why do the Russians burn Ukrainian books in the territories they occupy? Why do they clean out libraries and replace them with Russian titles? Why do they erase us and leave no trace of history?

They want their own facts. Their own version of events. Their own history. And so they destroy our peaceful typography. 50,000 books destroyed in one morning. I hope they will be remembered for this crime.

Many of these books were written by foreign authors. I can’t imagine how they felt when they, too, saw their burned works. One Chinese-Canadian writer, Xiran Jay Zhao, was among the first who declared their support for the publishing house and condemned Russian crimes. Russian bots flooded her social media and insisted that no books had been burned and no printing house had been attacked — an avalanche of lies.

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The support of book lovers, both domestic and foreign, keeps the ground firm under our feet. As publishers and authors spread the news of our destroyed printing house, readers came together and donated for the victims’ families and for reconstruction.

And everyone bought books printed in Factor-Druk. In Lviv, my city, I went to the bookstore and witnessed people carrying three or four books in their arms, as if promising protection to them.

This summer, there was a big literary festival in Kyiv which, for book lovers, was more exciting than any holiday. Books have remained a source of affordable joy. Our light in the darkness. To open one is to be reminded that there is still something good inside your soul.

Thousands of readers and authors were waiting for new titles. Thousands of books needed to be urgently printed.

You never know how many people are behind one book. The author may be on the cover, but, when you open the technical page, you see editors, designers and typesetters. Publishing and printing houses. And then there are other, unseen names.

Russia killed them — killed the people who make Ukrainian books. Every time you witness the celebration of Russian literature, remember that Ukrainian books, too, could be classics, if they were not destroyed all the time.

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