The Ukraine Shelf - New Podcast

Episode 1: Crimea

Exciting news! We have launched a new podcast: The Ukraine Shelf—where Uilleam Blacker and I chat with leading authors, scholars, intellectuals, and journalists about Ukraine and its place in the world. It is hosted by the UCL Institute for European Studies and produced in collaboration with the Ukrainian Institute London and UCL SSEES, with support from the British Academy.

This podcast was born out of curiosity and frustration. Curiosity, because we both believe that books have the power to expand our understanding of Ukraine—something we need now more than ever as the country fights to defend its sovereignty. And frustration, because whenever we visit a bookshop, we see entire sections dedicated to many nations—especially those with an imperialist past—but Ukraine’s presence is still far too limited. Things have improved somewhat since 2022, but we’ve still got a long way to go.

I have my own Ukraine shelf story. In late 2023, nearly two years into the full-scale invasion, I popped into a large Parisian bookstore to check if they had the newly published French translation of my book, The Death of a Soldier — La mort d'un frère. It’s a book I wrote about the death of my brother, Volodya, who was killed on the front line in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

And yes, they had it. But where was it shelved? You guessed it: the Russian literature section—littérature russe.

A book about Ukraine, written by a Ukrainian in English was categorised as ‘Russian literature’.

When I pointed this out to the store manager, his explanation was—let’s say—telling. Apparently, the section wasn’t about Russia as a country but as a ‘region’. According to this logic, everything that was once under Russian imperial or Soviet control still belongs on the ‘Russia’ shelf. Perhaps it should be renamed the ‘Russian imperialism’ shelf, in that case.

Needless to say, I refused to leave until my book was moved. Eventually, it was placed on the ‘new editions’ table. I wonder where it is now… If you’re in Paris and find yourself in that bookshop, send me a photo of my book’s new home! Who knows, the manager’s view of geography might have improved since our heated exchange.

If we don’t make space for Ukraine in our bookshops and libraries, the country won’t have space on our mental maps either. And when politicians, journalists, and intellectuals place Europe’s largest country within Russia’s ‘sphere of influence’ in their minds, that has real-world consequences, as we continue to see.

Uilleam Blacker and Olesya Khromeychuk with Episode 1 guests, Rory Finnin and Elmaz Asan.

We decided to start our podcast series with one of the most talked-about yet least understood parts of Ukraine: Crimea. And we invited two brilliant guests to unpack it: Rory Finnin, Professor of Ukrainian Studies at Cambridge, a leading scholar of Ukrainian culture, and author of Blood of Others: Stalin’s Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity, and Elmaz Asan, Crimean Tatar journalist at ATR and visiting research fellow at Cambridge, currently working on British accounts of Russian colonisation policies in Crimea after the 1783 annexation.

Listen to the first episode and follow Uilleam Blacker and me if you’d like a nudge when the next episode goes live.

And in the meantime—start making more space on your shelf for books on Ukraine.

Thank you for reading, listening, and helping spread the word about the Ukraine Shelf.