"The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history", said the historian Milan Hubl in Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. To destroy a man, first destroy his culture: this idea is neither new nor particularly singular. It was this very idea that prompted the creation of the Hague Convention in 1954, to protect cultural heritage during armed conflicts, after the Nazi regime burned and destroyed innumerable works of art in

russian forces are bombing print houses and burning Ukrainian books in occupied areas, but this is not new tactic. The article explains how Russian empire and Soviets already tryed to erase Ukrainian culture for over 160 years through bans and purges. Now reading and supporting local authors is important way to resist this cultural destruction