Authors

Iryna Kovalchuk¹;  ¹ UCD, UK

Discussion

On 2 January 2023, the American historian of Eastern Europe, Timothy Snyder, posted on Twitter a photo of a Ukrainian soldier in a trench, reading Snyder’s book The Road to Unfreedom. His caption, written in Ukrainian, translates as: “the highest honor for an author is a reader.” This particular reader was not, of course, inhabiting the traditional space one associates with books: the home, the library, the school or university. Fighting the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, the soldier was engaged in a practice that this paper will call reading on the frontline.
Reading on the frontline is a practice made possible only by the availability of reading material. In April 2023, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine along with Cultural Forces, an association of Ukrainian artists, launched the Book to the Front project. This is a charitable scheme that collects and disseminates books for Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the Russo-Ukrainian war. It is carried out via select bookstores, with customers buying and donating a book, while including an inscription or postcard with a message for a soldier.
This paper will draw on correspondence with proprietors and workers at these bookstores, who offered information about the most popular books and genres being sent to the front. It will also offer a comparative approach to reading on the frontline, framing the contemporary situation in Ukraine with respect to reading practices among soldiers on the frontlines of WWI and WWII.