Why is Moscow Afraid of a Ukrainian Written Word? Or, in Other Words, the Story of How the Imperial Power Weakened the Spirit of Russian Ukrainians via Forbidding Books

The history of the existence of the Ukrainian book in Moscow in general and Ukrainian libraries in particular are analyzed on the basis of archival materials. The timeframe for review is from the 18th century to the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

The little-known fact is emphasized: the power and the authority of the growing number of books that came to Moscow from the printing house of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in the fourteenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century were so great that tsar Petro I was forced to issue a special decree (1720) on the prohibition of the issues of this printing center, which came in spelling mismatching that of the Russian language.

Separately, the situation with the Ukrainian book in the capital of Russiain the 20s of the twentieth century is considered. This was the period of its greatest development. In Moscow then there was a powerful public organization – T. Shevchenko Ukrainian Club. Thanks to its efforts, despite the resistance of the official authorities, it became possible to open the Ukrainian library.

The fate of this library is traced here as well: evacuation on the eve of the Second World War to Central Asia, the return of Ukrainian books to the library ofLvivUniversity after the war, the closure of the Ukrainian library in Moscow in 1949.

The author has collected interesting facts about the recent history of the Ukrainian Library in Moscow. It began in the early 90s – since the restoration of Ukrainian independence. And it ended in 2017, when Russian authorities finally liquidated the library, and its head, Natalia Sharova, was imprisoned for, as they put it, holding "extremist books" and for "stirring up national hatred for Russians".