“Book Gate” campaign

The occasion was the destruction of the Korolenko children’s library in Poltava by corporate raiders. The Caravan turned the loss into a campaign: thousands of Kyiv schoolchildren carried their favourite books to partner libraries, of which the earlier Book Wave had left dozens. People heard about it through the Clean Channels media movement. Ministries, foreign cultural centres, schools and other institutions joined in too, which made it a large-scale campaign.

At the monument to Yaroslav the Wise the books were built into a gate. Among those who came and spoke about it were journalists and actors with Poltava ties: Oleh Deineka, who had been first to report the library’s destruction on Channel 5, Olha Sumska, Yurko Rudnytskyi and Raisa Nedashkivska. After an impromptu press conference the gate was taken apart, the books — several tonnes, mostly children’s — were loaded into a lorry provided by Yurii Lohush, and that same night they went to the Poltava regional research library, which had taken in what was left.