Much of the time, we are able to use catalogue records put together in other major libraries for books that are new to Cambridge, but sometimes we need to do the full cataloguing work ourselves, as has been the case with two recent Ukrainian arrivals.
Both books are 2022 publications from the L’viv Ivan Franko National University, an excellent publisher whose books we frequently buy. Both books are about language – but on very different subjects.
The fourth Saturday of November is Holodomor Memorial Day, which marks the loss of millions of Ukrainians in the man-made famine of 1932/33. Today, of course, the day of remembrance occurs during another man-made horror in Ukraine, as Russia’s war continues to take a terrible toll on Ukraine and Ukrainians.
We marked the 80th anniversary of the Holodomor in 2013 with a blog post about one particular book (here) and wrote again about the Holodomor in 2019, when the libraries put on a pop-up exhibition to tie in with a Cambridge Ukrainian Studies screening of the film ‘Mr Jones’ about the Welsh journalist whose unflinching reports of the horrors he saw were too easily ignored (blog post here). Continue reading
Yesterday evening, Cambridge Ukrainian Studies hosted a showing of the film ‘Mr Jones’. Directed by award-winner Agnieszka Holland, the film tells the story of Gareth Jones, the journalist who reported on the Holodomor, the appalling famine which killed millions in Ukraine. A pop-up exhibition of books from the UL and MMLL libraries was provided after the film, and the exhibits and captions are shown below. Each title is linked to the item’s iDiscover record. Please click on each image to enlarge it. Continue reading
The front cover of Naibil’shyi zlochyn Kremlia by M. Verbyts’kyi, CCC.62.35 (Newton record here)
The Slavonic item of the month feature aims to celebrate, through examination of particular pieces, the diversity and riches of Cambridge University Library’s Slavonic collections. It has been running since April 2013. Items featured in previous months can be found here on the Slavonic webpages.
This year is the 80th anniversary of the end of the Holodomor, the terrible man-made famine which caused the deaths of millions of people in Ukraine in 1932 to 1933. We remember its victims this month with a relatively early book about the famine: Naibil’shyi zlochyn Kremlia (‘The Kremlin’s greatest crime’) by M. Verbyts’kyi. Its cover shows a scythe-wielding skeleton looming over a dead woman and a grieving figure next to her.
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