Russia Is Destroying Ukrainian Books to Erase a Nation’s Identity

Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine is being fought not only over territory, infrastructure and military positions, but also over what Ukrainians will be able to read, teach and remember. Books are part of this war because they preserve the historical and cultural framework that Russia is attempting to suppress and replace. Ukrainian literature, history textbooks, children’s books and library collections carry narratives that contradict Moscow’s attempts to portray Ukraine as part of a single Russian historical and cultural space. Destroying or removing those materials therefore serves a purpose that goes far beyond the loss of paper and ink. It strikes at the mechanisms through which language, historical memory and national identity are passed from one generation to the next.

The scale of the physical destruction became particularly visible in August, when a Russian drone strike hit a warehouse belonging to the Ukrainian publishing house Ranok in Kharkiv. Around eight million books were destroyed in the attack, while more than 10 million books have reportedly been lost in Russian attacks on Ukraine’s publishing infrastructure in recent months. The strike exposed another vulnerability created by Russia’s full-scale invasion: the destruction of the physical infrastructure needed to produce and distribute Ukrainian-language culture. A single attack on a warehouse can eliminate millions of copies of textbooks, children's books and Ukrainian literature that would otherwise have reached readers and schools across the country.

The consequences extend far beyond the immediate loss of stock. A book represents an entire production chain involving authors, editors, illustrators, publishers, printers and distributors. When millions of finished copies are destroyed, publishers have to rebuild that chain while operating under wartime conditions and facing damaged infrastructure, disrupted logistics and financial pressure. For educational publishers, the consequences are particularly serious because textbooks are tied to school years and curricula. The destruction of a warehouse can therefore affect what Ukrainian children are able to read and learn long after the physical attack has ended.

Occupation begins by changing what children can read

In Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia, the strategy is more direct. Russian occupation authorities have systematically removed Ukrainian educational and cultural material and replaced it with Russian-controlled content. Ukrainian authorities have documented the confiscation and destruction of Ukrainian history and literature textbooks, as well as books dealing with the Maidan, Ukraine’s independence and liberation movements. Works concerning Ukrainian historical figures have also been targeted, including books about Ivan Mazepa, Symon Petliura, Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and other figures whom Russian authorities have sought to exclude from the historical narrative available to people living under occupation.

This is important because the targeted material is not simply Ukrainian because of its language. It provides an independent historical narrative. A history textbook tells a child which events shaped their country; literature provides a language through which those experiences can be understood; local publications preserve memories that may never appear in an official Russian curriculum. Removing these materials weakens the connection between the individual and the cultural environment that existed before occupation.

The replacement is equally significant. In occupied territories, Russia has imposed its own educational programmes, introduced Russian textbooks and replaced elements of the Ukrainian curriculum with narratives that reflect Moscow’s interpretation of Ukrainian history and justify Russia’s invasion. Russian language and educational standards have been imposed alongside broader restrictions on expressions of Ukrainian culture and identity.

The result is a deliberate process of substitution. First, Ukrainian educational material is removed from the environment in which children live. Then Russian material is introduced to occupy the same space. Cultural erasure does not require every Ukrainian book to be physically destroyed. It can also be achieved by making Ukrainian books inaccessible while ensuring that Russian books become the default source of education and historical knowledge.

Textbooks are infrastructure for national identity

The targeting of textbooks makes the connection between education and identity particularly clear. Schoolbooks are among the first institutional sources through which children encounter their country's history, geography, language and literature. They determine which historical events are emphasised, which figures are remembered and how major political and social developments are explained. Controlling textbooks therefore gives an occupying power an opportunity to influence not only what children know, but how they understand the country in which they were born.

Russia has used this mechanism extensively in occupied Ukrainian territories. Russian educational standards and curricula have been introduced in schools, while Ukrainian historical narratives have been displaced. Education has increasingly been used to present Russian interpretations of history and to reinforce the idea that Ukrainian territory and Ukrainian identity belong within a Russian historical framework.

The significance extends beyond the classroom. Education is one of the main mechanisms through which societies reproduce themselves across generations. Families can preserve traditions and memories, but schools, libraries and publishing houses provide the institutional infrastructure that allows those traditions to exist on a much larger scale. When those institutions are transformed by an occupying power, children can grow up surrounded by the language and narratives imposed by Russia even when their families continue to identify as Ukrainian.

That is why the removal of Ukrainian textbooks cannot be treated as an ordinary change in educational policy. It changes the environment in which identity is produced. Language, literature, history and education reinforce one another. Weakening one makes it easier to weaken the others.

Libraries preserve what occupation tries to remove

Libraries occupy a different but equally important position. Unlike a school textbook, which represents an official curriculum, a library contains a much wider record of cultural life. It can hold Ukrainian novels, poetry, historical research, regional publications, children's literature and works that reflect political experiences outside the narrative promoted by the Russian state. Removing these collections reduces the diversity of narratives available to an entire community.

Ukrainian authorities have documented the destruction and seizure of libraries in territories occupied by Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Ukrainian cultural institutions have also reported the removal of Ukrainian-language books and materials related to Ukrainian history from libraries under occupation. The objective is not simply to empty shelves. It is to transform what those shelves represent.

A library is one of the places where a community encounters its own cultural history in physical form. When Ukrainian books disappear, Ukrainian culture becomes less visible in everyday life. When those books are replaced with Russian publications, the change goes further: the next generation encounters a different cultural environment from the one that existed before occupation.

This is why cultural destruction can be difficult to measure. The disappearance of a library building is immediately visible, but the consequences of removing its books unfold over years. A child who never encounters a Ukrainian author at school or in a local library may not experience that absence as a single act of repression. It becomes part of the environment in which they grow up.

Language is part of the battlefield

Language is central to this strategy because literature and education are among the main ways a language is transmitted between generations. Ukrainian has survived centuries of imperial pressure and attempts to subordinate it to Russian. In territories occupied by Russia, the imposition of Russian as the dominant language of education and public institutions therefore has significance far beyond communication.

Replacing Ukrainian-language educational material changes what children encounter every day. It determines which books are available in classrooms, which authors are taught, which historical sources teachers can use and which cultural references become familiar. A Ukrainian-language book demonstrates that Ukrainian can be the language of science, history, education, fiction and intellectual life. Removing those books and replacing them with Russian-language material changes that environment.

For Moscow, this has strategic value. The weaker the institutional presence of Ukrainian becomes in an occupied territory, the easier it becomes to present Russian language and culture as the natural norm. Cultural policy then reinforces political control.

The same principle applies to children's literature. A child does not encounter national identity only through history lessons or political speeches. It is also formed through stories, characters, poems, illustrations and language. Children's books can establish a sense of belonging long before a child has the vocabulary to understand political identity. Removing that cultural material therefore affects one of the earliest stages at which identity is transmitted.

The physical and ideological attacks reinforce each other

The destruction of Ukrainian books in territories occupied by Russia and the destruction of publishing infrastructure elsewhere in Ukraine are different mechanisms, but they place pressure on the same cultural system. In occupied areas, Russia controls what people are allowed to read and what children are taught. In government-controlled Ukraine, Russian attacks can destroy the infrastructure needed to produce and distribute what Ukrainians choose to read.

The destruction of the Ranok warehouse in Kharkiv illustrates this second dimension. The loss of millions of books affects not only a private publisher but also the availability of educational and cultural material across Ukraine. It demonstrates how Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure can have consequences that extend into cultural life, even when the immediate target is a warehouse or industrial facility.

The two processes should not be treated as identical. There is a fundamental difference between deliberately removing Ukrainian books from schools and libraries under occupation and destroying a publishing warehouse in a Russian attack. But together they demonstrate the pressure placed on the material foundations of Ukrainian cultural life. One mechanism suppresses access through occupation; the other destroys part of the infrastructure that makes access possible.

The broader consequence is a narrowing of the space in which Ukrainian culture can reproduce itself. Authors need publishers. Publishers need printers and warehouses. Schools need textbooks. Libraries need books. Children need access to Ukrainian-language material. When several parts of this chain are damaged by Russia’s war, maintaining cultural continuity becomes more difficult and more expensive.

A war over what survives

Russia’s campaign against Ukrainian books is therefore part of a wider effort to suppress Ukrainian historical memory and national identity. The confiscation of textbooks, removal of Ukrainian literature from libraries, imposition of Russian curricula and language, and destruction of publishing infrastructure affect different stages of the same process: the transmission of Ukrainian culture from one generation to the next.

The objective does not require every Ukrainian book to disappear. Cultural erasure can work through smaller changes repeated over time. A Ukrainian history textbook removed from a classroom, a Ukrainian author removed from a library, a Ukrainian-language lesson replaced with a Russian one, or millions of books destroyed in a Russian strike may each appear limited in isolation. Together, however, they alter the cultural environment in which Ukrainians learn about themselves.

That is why the destruction of books matters even when the immediate physical damage appears secondary to the destruction of homes, energy infrastructure or industrial facilities. Buildings can be rebuilt and equipment can be replaced. Cultural memory is more difficult to reconstruct once the institutions responsible for transmitting it have been dismantled, emptied or transformed.