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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Jubilee of Salvation

1 December, 1998 - 00:00

Ukrainian House in Kyiv hosted a state-level ceremony Friday, with the
attendant protocol, speeches, and other creative-literary pomp, since the
event commemorate the thousandth anniversary of chronicle-writing and book-printing
in Ukraine.

The date cannot be regarded as absolutely certain, mildly speaking.
Experts (e.g., Dmytro Chyzhevsky, et al.) believe that the Ostromirove
Gospels appeared sometime in 1056-57. But the jubilee is celebrated
nonetheless. Now this is one case when one does not feel like joking. It
is not like all those stupid artist's, designer's, or small businessman's
days and all the other holidays in which our independent and unblushing
official calendar is so rich (incidentally, very much like the one instituted
in Germany in the 1930s). The date seems to have been invented solely due
to the desperate condition of Ukrainian book publishers. They must have
done all they could to attract authorities' attention to the catastrophic
condition of Ukrainian book printing. Official statistics show that current
print runs are comparable to those in 1940.

What is happening to Ukrainian book publishing and what is to be done
to overcome this permanent crisis? The Day plans a series of articles
discussing this in coming issues.

 

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