The decision whether to withdraw Communist literature from Ukrainian libraries will be made upon an inspection of all library funds. Culture Minister of Ukraine Vassyl Vovkun claimed this to journalists, according to Kommentarii weekly.

The Ukraine’s Ministry for Culture and Tourism is drawing up an inventory of literature in country’s libraries on the initiative of the Minister.

According to the official information of the Ministry, the Verkhovna Rada Committee for culture and spirituality received an address from the All-Ukrainian Union of Veterans. They proposed to inspect library funds and to withdraw literature that popularizes “Communist and chauvinist ideology”. The Verkhovna Rada committee sent the address to the Ministry with a demand to study the situation in libraries in all Ukrainian regions.

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At present, the Ministry has not decided as yet what it will do with the Soviet literature. In particular, Minister Vovkun has an idea of creating a museum of social art in Prypyat [the town where the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is situated, the center of the Chornobyl zone of alienation].  He proposes to bring there all monuments and books of the Soviet period.

At the same time, the Ministry plans to spend more than 20 million hryvnias [~US $ 4 million] on replenishing libraries with Ukrainian literature. The first tranche of 10 million hryvnias will be channeled to Crimean libraries, which, according to the results of a recent monitoring, have only 13% of Ukrainian books.