By Peter Pomerantsev
When Russian tanks rolled into the town of Vovchansk in north-east Ukraine in February 2022, some of the locals knew what they needed to do first: save the books. Vyacheslav Borodavka, once a headmaster and now computer-science teacher, joined forces with the town’s school teachers to hide textbooks on history and politics, geography and literature, behind radiators and under floorboards, in attics and dingy cellars. Within days of the occupation, Russian soldiers burst into school libraries across the district. They hauled off Ukrainian books into the hills above the town, where they dumped them in vast piles, doused them in kerosene and set them alight. The fires smouldered for days.
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