Yeah, it made very little sense when they did it during the beginning of the SMO. It was just a dumb propaganda stunt in two parts to eliminate Russian language media in Ukraine and simultaneously drum up support for the war machine. The main goal was to destroy any media in the Russian language and build support for that book destruction by saying that it would in some way help the military, even though the connection there is tenuous at best.

About a year ago the Ukrainian government also banned (and destroyed) about 19 million books for either being in the Russian language, being Soviet literature, or for covering history they don't like (unsure what history exactly the ban referred to as I cannot find the official list or any media in a language I can read or search in that has covered that aspect of the ban) all the while claiming that the Russian military has been indiscriminately confiscating and burning all books.

The evidence given was the relatively empty shelves in libraries after they themselves banned and destroyed approximately half of the books in libraries and schools throughout the country without any real plans to even replace those books with Ukrainian-language books for the maybe 60% of people in the nation who speak that language.

[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 20 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the extra context. I remember the government book banning and destruction last year. Is this just bookshops continuing the trend then or a government backed thing?

[–] EmmaGoldman@hexbear.net 24 points 9 months ago

Seems to be kind of an ongoing public-private thing where everyone just seems to be going "oh boy I sure do love destroying books!" Whether it's coordinated or not, it seems to be a major trend.

Book stores selling more books by offering a discount, people wanting to use that discount instead of waiting for the government to just make the destruction of those books mandatory and thus ineligible for a discount, government stripping libraries bare.

Not a good sign.