A middle-aged man in a black jacket is sitting on a chair near the wall with a book in his hands on the first floor of the Ukrainian House, the exhibition hall in central Kyiv that was recently taken over by EuroMaidan activists. Andriy Shpak, a protester from Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine, is a regular visitor of the recently formed Maidan library.
“I love history,” he said, looking aside from a brown hardcover book he is reading.
“Two days ago I finished reading the first volume of Dmytro Yavornytsky’s ‘History of Ukraine,’ now I am reading the third volume of the book,” he added.
Shpak has come to the Ukrainian House for a snack and for a little rest after he has been building new barricades behind the Ukrainian House, formerly the Lenin Museum during Soviet times. He says he is very busy these days but devotes his every free moment to reading.
“People here are interested in books in history, law and Ukrainian fiction most of all,” says EuroMaidan volunteer Mykyta Ihnatiuk, a student from Dnipropetrovsk.
Wrapped in a Ukrainian flag, Ihnatiuk is sitting behind a table with two piles of books on it. There are hundreds of donated books available, and their numbers keep growing daily. He takes books from one stack, quickly stamps them with a EuroMaidan’s library mark and places them into another pile. Simultaneously, Ihnatiuk helps the library’s visitors to find books they look for. Before the building was taken over, the books were brought to the city hall, another building held by protesters.
“When I am not too busy I like to read books on law and the European Union because I want to find out what are the best European laws that Ukraine could adopt,” he says.
“A variety of children’s literature is a distinctive feature of our library,” says Larysa Nitsoy, a Ukrainian writer who currently volunteers as a EuroMaidan librarian.
“Fairy tales are very popular among the protesters. Many of them come and ask for more,” she added and explained that reading children fiction therapeutic that helps activists relax after the tense atmosphere in Kyiv’s streets.
Nitsoy believes that after the protests are over and the activists return home to their families, they will be able to retell their kids the fairy tales they have read at the EuroMaidan library.
“It seems that Ukrainians suddenly became one of the most reading nations in the world,” jokes Ihnatiuk, adding that the library has on average 25 visitors an hour. Some of them come and grab up to 15 books. People take books not only for themselves but also their friends.
“Heads of EuroMaidan self-defense units told me that now the entire self-defense squads are engaged in reading,” Ihnatiuk said.
Nitsoy says that the idea to form EuroMaidan’s library appeared a month ago when Ukrainian writers started gathering books and arranging reading marathons for the protesters at the Kyiv city council. Now the library has several bookcases but the number of its books is constantly growing.
“People bring us books every day,” says the writer. “Some people are very generous, like Dmytro Hortman, who yesterday donated some 50 books on foreign literature and promised to bring more.”
Membership or a library card isn’t a requirement at the library. Everyone is welcome to take a book for free.
“We trust our readers and give them candies when they return books to the library,” says Ihnatiuk.
Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected].
