After the Second World War, around 20,000 Slovenians left Yugoslavia for ideological and political reasons. Having spent several years in displaced persons camps in Italy and Austria, they settled in various countries in Europe, the USA, Canada, South America and Australia.

Slovenians in exile founded cultural organizations which served to connect them and preserve their identity and culture. Many dedicated their free time to writing, singing and performing in Slovenian to nurture and preserve their language and tradition.

In 1954, Slovenska kulturna akcija (Slovenian Cultural Action) was founded in Buenos Aires with the aim of bringing together Slovenian authors at home and abroad, those “who want to help create and disseminate cultural values, especially Slovenian ones, through creative and intermediary work”. One of the first tasks of the Slovenian Cultural Action (SKA) was the launch of a magazine for art and literature, Meddobje (‘Inter-century’), and the newspaper Glas (‘Voice’).

Cover of an issue of Meddobje (Buenos Aires, (1954-) ZA.9.a.2053.

Founded in 1954, the cultural magazine Meddobje was financed by subscription and donations from supporters. A total of 116 volumes were published until 2021. The image on the front cover is a detail of the linocut ‘Stalagmiti and Stalagtiti’ (1953), the work of the painter Božidar Kramolc. All issues of Meddobje from 1954 to 2018 are available from the Digital Library of Slovenia.

Front page of Glas: Slovenske kulturne akcije, vol. 20. no 10-11, October-November 1973 (Buenos Aires, 1954- ) ZA.9.b.609

The 1973 issue of Glas was dedicated to the Slovenian poet France Balantič (1921-1943), one of the most prominent Slovenian poets before and during World War II. He is regarded as one of the best Slovenian sonnet writers. The portrait of Balantič is by Marijan Tršar (1922-2010), a painter, graphic artist, publicist and art critic. All issues of Glas from 1954 to 2022 are also available from the Digital Library of Slovenia, as are the proceedings of the organisation, titled Vrednote (‘Values’), for 1951, 1954-1955, 1957 and 1968.

The Slovenian Cultural Action organised cultural evenings, lectures, art exhibitions, concerts and theatre performances, among other events. They also served as a publishing house. Their authors published books that could not be published in Yugoslavia for ideological, political or personal reasons. From the beginning, they focused on publishing works by Slovenians who lived abroad.

Cover of Karel Mauser, Jerčevi galjoti (Buenos Aires, 1958) YA.1993.a.19735. The cover illustration is by Metka Žirovnik.

The publishing activity was vibrant from the start, and in the first years six to ten titles were published annually. These books represent a valuable contribution by the diaspora writers to the Slovenian art and literature in general. 

Frontispiece of Božanska komedija. Pekel, a Slovenian translation of Dante’s Inferno by Tine Debeljak (Buenos Aires, 1959) YA.1992.a.20316. The woodcut illustration above is by Bara Remec, a painter, book illustrator and founder of the SKA School of Art in Buenos Aires. The frontispiece ‘Dante’ is dedicated to Jože Debevec (1867-1938), a theologian and writer, the first translator of the entire Divine Comedy into Slovenian, and a writer of commentary.

A woodcut by Bara Remec in Božanska komedija. Pekel

Slovenian émigré publishing in North America is well represented by the Studia Slovenica, which was founded in Washington in 1957 by the economist and librarian Janez Arnež (1923-2021), together with two of his colleagues and collaborators, ten years after the arrival of the first Slovenian political émigrés. This institute published and distributed books about Slovenia and the Slovenian Diaspora in its two series. In total, 38 titles were published. Studia Slovenica comprehensively collected printed and archival material, manuscripts, work-related and private papers by Slovenians living outside Slovenia. This large and rich archive of Slovenian émigré publications and private papers found a permanent home at the St. Stanislav Institute in Ljubljana in 1991.

Thousands of books, periodicals, newspapers, ephemera, manuscripts and private papers are the record of the cultural life of the Slovenians in their new communities abroad. Arnež and his Studia Slovenica diligently collected and saved all these valuable primary sources of émigré religious, educational, and cultural life for future generations, as an important and integral part of the Slovenian national heritage. This archive is an indispensable resource for the history of Slovenian emigration and the study of Slovenian printed word outside Slovenia.

Cover of Marijan Marolt, Slovenska likovna umetnost v zamejstvu (‘Slovenian fine art abroad’), with drawings by Ivan Bukovec (Buenos Aires, 1959) YA.1993.a.19600

Page from Zgodovinski Atlas Slovenije (Buenos Aires, 1960) Maps 203.d.37.

The Zgodovinski Atlas Slovenije (‘Historical Atlas of Slovenia’) was first printed in a displaced persons camp in 1948 as a textbook by the classical philologist Roman Pavlovčič and his students, and was reprinted as the 40th publication of the Slovenian Cultural Action in 1960.

A collection of poems by Vladimir Truhlar, Rdeče bivanje (‘Red stay’). Front cover by France Papež (Buenos Aires, 1961) YA.1993.a.19760

A collection of short stories by Jože Krivec, Pij, fant, grenko pijačo! (‘Drink, boy, a bitter drink!’). Front cover by Ivan Bukovec (Buenos Aires, 1978) YA.1993.a.19712

Milan Grba, Lead Curator South-East European Collections

Useful bibliographies and catalogues on written cultural heritage of Slovenian émigré communities:

Jože Bajec, Slovensko izseljensko časopisje, 1891-1945 (Ljubljana, 1980) X.950/23786 

John A Arnež, Slovenski tisk iz begunskih taborišč v Avstriji in Italiji, 1945-1949: seznam Tiska Razstvljenega v Zavodu Sv. Stanislava Ljubljana-Šentvid = Slovenian printed material from the DP camps in Austria and Italy, 1945-1949 : catalog of items exhibited at the Zavod Sv. Stanislava Ljubljana-Šentvid  (Ljubljana; New York, 1993) YF.2006.a.17247 

France Papež, Zbornik Slovenske kulturne akcije 1954-1994 (Buenos Aires, 1994) YA.1996.b.6819 

Janez A. Arnez, Slovenski tisk v ZDA in Kanadi, 1940-1997 = Slovenian printed material in the USA and Canada (Ljubljana; Washington, 1997) Ac.9233.wb.(19) 

Janez A Arnež, Slovenski tisk v begunskih taboriščih v Avstriji 1945-1949  (Ljubljana; Washington, 1999) Ac.9233.wb.(20) 

Marijan Eiletz, Zbornik Slovenske kulturne akcije, 1954-2004 (Buenos Aires, 2004). YF.2022.a.11392

In June, the British Library hosted two special events dedicated to Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907), a visionary artist, writer, and designer whose work continues to captivate audiences across Europe. Timed to coincide with the wider cultural spotlight of the UK/Poland Season and led by the British Council and the Polish Cultural Institute, these events offered a chance to explore Wyspiański’s extraordinary creative legacy and reflect on the broader role of Polish collections in the British Library’s holdings.

Illustration by Wyspiański from Tadeusz Miciński’s W mroku gwiazd (Kraków, 1902) 11586.aaa.3.

As curator of Polish collections, I often think about how we can make European materials resonate across cultural and linguistic boundaries. How can we make our collections engaging and meaningful for British audiences, while remaining rooted in the heritage of diaspora communities? With that in mind, we designed two events that both celebrated the richness of Polish culture and built bridges between artistic traditions.

Dr Julia Griffin delivering a lecture during the workshop for students from The Courtauld Institute of Art

The first was a workshop for students from the Courtauld Institute of Art. We piloted a new format that combined an introductory lecture with a hands-on show-and-tell session using materials from the Library’s collection. Dr Julia Griffin opened the session with an engaging lecture titled ‘Wyspiański and William Morris – Parallels in Art, Philosophy, and the Book Beautiful’, exploring the resonances between Wyspiański and the Young Poland cultural phenomenon and the British Arts and Crafts movement spearheaded by Morris. Both artists championed the idea that beauty and craftsmanship should be woven into everyday life, and both blurred the lines between disciplines: painting, design, poetry, printing, and architecture.

Show-and-tell session during the workshop for students from The Courtauld Institute of Art

Following the lecture, Catriona Gourlay, Curator of Printed Heritage Collections, and I presented a selection of collection items that brought the discussion to life. Students had the chance to experience the materials up close, engaging with the physicality and artistry of the objects. It was a rare opportunity to see Wyspiański’s vision not just described, but felt in colour, form, and texture.

Show-and-tell session during the workshop for students from The Courtauld Institute of Art

We continued our journey into Wyspiański’s world on the evening of 5 June with a public panel discussion ‘Stanisław Wyspiański, a kind of Polish William Morris, to whom no form of art came amiss’. Our panellists – Dr Alison Smith (Wallace Collection), Dr Julia Griffin (William Morris Gallery), and Roisin Inglesby (William Morris Gallery)—explored how Wyspiański’s achievements fit within the wider Arts and Crafts context. A true polymath of the Young Poland movement, Wyspiański poured his creative energy into painting, stained glass, typography, furniture, scenography, and most famously, his symbolist plays. He fused word, image, and form into a single, breath-taking expression of artistic life. His practice defied neat categorisation – there was no separation between mediums, and everyday life was inseparable from art.

Pages from A Note by William Morris on his aims in founding the Kelmscott Press: together with a short description of the Press by S.C. Cockerell, and an annotated list of the books printed thereat (Hammersmith, 1898) C.43.c.17.

The discussion highlighted parallels with Morris and the shared ideals that united these artists across borders: a reverence for tradition, a belief in the moral and spiritual power of art, and a determination to bring beauty into daily life.

What emerged from the discussion was not only a portrait of a brilliant and restless creative mind, but also a reflection on Europe’s shared artistic heritage—how ideas, influences, and ideals travelled across languages and nations, and continue to do so today.

As we look ahead, I hope we can continue to offer opportunities to explore the richness of Polish culture in dialogue with British and European traditions. Wyspiański reminds us that imagination knows no borders – and that art, in its highest form, brings us closer to one another.

Both events were organised with the kind support of the Polish Cultural Institute. You can view a full recording of the discussion panel on the Institute's YouTube channel. 

There is currently an exhibition on Stanisław Wyspiański’s portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, and we are excited to continue the Polish season at the Library with more events planned for the second half of the year.

Meanwhile, you can read more about Wyspiański’s life and work in our earlier blog post.

Olga Topol, Curator Slavonic and East European Collections

For the second consecutive year, I have the honour of being a judge at Premio Strega, the main literary prize in Italy. It is an extraordinary opportunity to immerse myself in Italian literature for a few weeks and see how it is evolving. I like the style of the new Italian fiction. It is braver, more instinctive, daring. The language is more natural.

The twelve books I read are the ‘best’ works of fiction published in Italy in 2024, according to the Premio Strega committee. These are very personal works, almost always containing autobiographical elements. The themes that dominate this edition are the Italian family – or what is left of it – and the city.

The urban landscape takes centre stage: Bari, Messina, Napoli, Portofino, Torino are the true protagonists, vulnerable, exposed in their worst moments. Messina is devastated by the 1908 earthquake in Nadia Terranova’s Quello che so di te, Naples struggles after the Second World War in Elisabetta Rasy’s Perduto è questo mare, Portofino in winter in Valerio Aiolli’s Portofino Blues is far from the touristic hotspot that it becomes in summer, Bari is afflicted by speculative urbanism in Elvio Carrieri’s Poveri a Noi.

Carrieri, at 21 years old, is the youngest of the competitors, who are truly of all ages, and are published by a great variety of small and medium publishers: the big houses are in a minority this year. It is a great victory for bibliodiversity and authors come from the whole of the peninsula, and beyond.

Poster with the ‘dozzina’, the 12 books nominated for this year's Premio Strega Prize

Academic and novelist Renato Martinoni is the most prominent Swiss-Italian author of his generation. In Ricordi di suoni e di luci, Martinoni tells the story of poète maudit Dino Campana and of the very rare first edition of his Canti Orfici (we own the second edition: Florence, 1928; 20009.f.11, published in 1928, when Campana was in a mental institution), giving a voice to Giovanni Segantini’s alpine landscapes and offering a very well researched work of literature.

Giovanni Segantini, Pascoli alpini, 1893, Kunsthaus Zürich. Image from Wikimedia Commons

Paolo Nori’s Chiudo la porta e urlo succeeds in being at the same time a diary, a collection of translations of poems by Raffaello Baldini, a dialectal poet from Romagna, and a love letter for Russian culture and literature – a subject in which Nori is an expert, often referring to his biography of Dostoevsky and to his more recent book on poet Anna Achmatova. Some of Nori’s earlier works are in our collections and he is a very witty and original author.

Who will win this year? A favourite is Nadia Terranova with Quello che so di te, a personal work that talks about the author’s own experience of motherhood and links it with the mental health issues suffered by her great-grandmother. It is a well accomplished work, and Terranova is not new to Strega, her book Addio fantasmi (‘Farewell, Ghosts’) was finalist in 2019 and Trema la notte has just been translated as ‘The Night Trembles’.

My personal preference goes to Andrea Bajani’s L’anniversario, a moving story of estrangement from his family and overcoming trauma through writing. I found it a perfectly written book and reading it has been an absolute joy. The winner will be announced on 4 July, but I am already looking forward to reading next year’s books!

Valentina Mirabella, Curator, Romance Collections

References:

Dino Campana, Canti Orfici (Florence, 1928) 20009.f.11

Paolo Nori, Sanguina ancora: l’incredibile vita di Fëdor Michajlovič Dostoevskij: romanzo (Milan, 2021) YF.2021.a.14813

Nadia Terranova, Addio fantasmi (Turin, 2018) YF.2022.a.16235

Nadia Terranova, Trema la notte (Turin, 2022) YF.2023.a.6732

Svetlana Aleksievich, a Belarusian-Ukrainian Russian-speaking writer, creates documentary novels, which consist of the carefully arranged oral testimonies of hundreds of people united in their shared experience of significant events during Soviet history. Her five works form a cycle known as Golosa utopii (‘The Voices of Utopia’). In 2015 Svetlana Aleksievich received the Nobel Prize in Literature for “her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage of our time.” She was the first Belarusian, 14th woman, and the sixth Russian-speaking writer to receive this prize. The Nobel Prize award sparked a lot of reactions, and ignited interest in examining Aleksievich’s works and their publications.

The books of Svetlana Aleksievich differ in their content depending on their editions. Aleksievich continuously edits her texts by adding previously omitted, censored, or self-censored passages; by removing, editing or rearranging previously published narratives; and by including documents or reactions to her published books in succeeding editions.

The translations of Aleksievich’s books provide yet another layer of interpretation. Currently her books have been translated into 52 languages and published in 55 countries. The patterns of translations and publishing reveal the changes in the global context and recognition of Aleksievich’s work for either artistic or political reasons.

Cover of U voiny ne zhenskoe litso (Minsk, 1985) YF.2008.a.16467 

Pages from U voiny ne zhenskoe litso (Minsk, 1985)

The first Russian-language Belarusian edition of her book U voiny ne zhenskoe litso (The Unwomanly Face of War), published in Minsk in 1985, contains photographs of the women interviewed for the book. It is confirmation that the book features oral history and is not a work of fiction. These, or any other photographs, do not appear in succeeding editions.

Cover of 1988 English edition of U voiny ne zhenskoe litso,  War's Unwomanly Face (Moscow, 1988) YC.1991.a.3986.

The photograph on the cover of 1988 English edition, printed in Moscow under the title War’s Unwomanly Face, features the photograph from the 1985 Belarusian edition on its cover, the last link to the visual documentary. The 2004 Russian edition of the book contains not only parts that were previously censored, but also Aleksievich’s reflection on her work with her material, which she titled Everything Can Become Literature. With this she signals her direction towards literary interpretation of documentary materials.

Cover of the first Ukrainian translation, U viiny ne zhinoche oblychchia (Kharkiv, 2016) YF.2016.a.17203

It is from this 2004 edition that most of the recent translations are made. This includes the first translation of the book into Ukrainian in 2016, U viiny ne zhinoche oblychchia.

Tsinkovye mal’chiki (Zinky Boys) is the third book of the cycle. It presents the Soviet narratives of the Soviet-Afghan war. It was first published in 1991 in Moscow. The phrase ‘zinky boys’ refers to the bodies of Soviet soldiers repatriated in zinc coffins. The first Belarusian edition (Moscow, 1991; YA.1995.a.27836) already includes Aleksievich’s reflection on the reactions this yet unpublished book caused: the parts of the books were published in Belarusian newspapers and periodicals prior to the book’s publication.

Cover of the Spanish edition of Tsinkovye mal’chiki , Los Muchachos de Zinc: Voces Soviéticas de la Guerra de Afganistán (Barcelona, 2016) YF.2016.a.25638

Cover of the French edition of Tsinkovye mal’chiki, Les Cercueils de Zinc’ (Paris, 1991) YA.1992.a.16574

Some translations, like the French edition, translated the title more straightforwardly as ‘Zinc Coffins’. Some added an explanation, like the Spanish edition pointing to the Soviet voices, or a French version emphasising frustration with conflicts (this version is not available in the BL).

Cover of Russian edition of Tsinkovye mal’chiki (Moscow, 2001) YA.2003.a.27136

The cover illustration of the 2001 Russian edition features an image of a mother holding her dead child. The cover of this edition brings the focus towards the grieving mothers. They are featured in the book among other voices. Mothers are also among those who filed a lawsuit against Aleksievich after the initial publication of Tsinkovye mal’chiki for representing their sons in a light that damages their reputation and memory. This 2001 edition, and those that followed, include the trial materials, Aleksievich’s speech in court, and reactions of politicians, public features and public to the book and the court case. 

The last book of the cycle, Vremia sekond hend (Secondhand Time), was published in 2013. It came out first in Swedish, then in German and French, and then in Russian. This book is the culmination of Aleksievich’s work of the past decades, in which she collected the narratives of those, who, like herself, lived through the shift from the Soviet Union to post-Soviet life. Aleksievich explains in the beginning of the book that she is in a rush “to capture the traces” of “the Soviet civilization”. As with all her books, Aleksievich is mostly concerned with recording the emotional impact of ideological, social, and economic changes on regular people. To accurately interpret these experiences to the Western readers, translators and editors must make decisions on title translation, the use of footnotes and other additional explanations in translated texts.

 Cover of the Fitzcarraldo edition of Secondhand Time (London, 2016) YF.2016.a.26652

The English translation by Bela Shayevich has the most extensive footnotes, explaining nearly every unclear concept. Its title is close to the original as it includes ‘secondhand time’ yet follows it with an explanation of finality: Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets.

Cover of the French edition of Vremia sekond hend, La Fin de l'Homme Rouge ou le Temps du Desenchantement’(Paris, 2016) YF.2016.a.26651

Cover of the German edition of Vremia sekond hend, Secondhand-Zeit: Leben auf den Trümmern des Sozialismus (Bonn, 2013) SF.427[Bd.1397]

The French translation avoids the concept of ‘secondhand time’ and instead reinterprets the title via the lens of emotions associated in the West with the post-Soviet era, namely a sense of hopelessness. The German translation retains ‘the secondhand time’ in the title but refocuses on the concept of socialism more relatable to German readers.

Cover of the Belarusian edition of Vremia sekond hend, Chas Second-Hand: Kanets Chyrvonaha Chalaveka (Minsk, 2013) YF.2016.a.10823

The Belarusian translation was the first translation in nearly 15 years. It was published by an independent Belarusian publishing house and used the cover image of the square in Minsk, which evokes an array of associations in Belarusian readers. Unlike the image on the cover of the French edition, ‘the Red Person’ on the Belarusian cover is leaving the page.

Svetlana Aleksievich’s polyphonic writing and her continuous editing in combination with diverse translations of her works point to the synergetic effort to convey to the readers the collective memory in the most relatable and empathetic way.   

Darya Lis, PhD Candidate, Collaborative Dissertation Partnership: Queen Mary University of London and the British Library

References/further reading:

Svetlana Aleksievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from a Forgotten War (London, 1992) YK.1993.b.3754

Svetlana Aleksievich, Vremia Sekond Khėnd. (Moscow, 2013) YF.2013.a.22038

Margarita Savchenkova, ‘Secondhand Stories in between Fact and Fiction: The Impact of Translators’ Footnotes in Svetlana Alexievich’s Narrative’, Palimpsestes:Revue de Traduction, no. 37, 2024, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.4000/11wh1

One of Germany’s great contributions to garden history, the Hortus Eystettensis, a magnificent 17th-century catalogue of the Bishop of Eichstätt’s garden, is on display in our current exhibition Unearthed: the Power of Gardening, in a splendid hand-coloured edition. Unfortunately, there was no room in the exhibition for another of Germany’s great contributions to garden history: the garden gnome (or garden dwarf, ‘Gartenzwerg’, as they are known in Germany). So I thought I would give the humble gnome a brief moment in the British Library sun.

For something often sneered at as ‘common’, the garden gnome has some surprisingly aristocratic forebears. In the 17th century noble families in German-speaking Europe began to decorate the gardens of their palaces with sculptures of caricatured dwarfs, based on the engravings of Jacques Callot; some of the most famous are in the Mirabell Palace Gardens in Salzburg. Both Callot’s engravings and the sculptures they inspired probably took inspiration from the ‘court dwarfs’ employed in European royal households as fools and curiosities in the 16th and 17th centuries.

One of the dwarf sculptures in the  Mirabell Palace Gardens, Salzburg (photo: Susan Reed)

It was probably this sort of sculpture that Goethe was thinking of when he mentioned garden gnomes in his epic poem Hermann und Dorothea. In one section of the poem, a local apothecary laments the fact that his garden with its rustic wooden fences, grottos, gilded furnishings, and ‘stone beggars and colourful dwarfs’ has gone out of fashion, replaced in popularity by ‘tasteful’ smooth lawns and white benches. This suggests that by the late 18th century dwarf sculptures had become as much a bourgeois as an aristocratic trend and that, like garden gnomes today, they were increasingly seen as a sign of old-fashioned (and indeed bad) taste.

It’s not quite certain whether there’s a direct link between these baroque dwarfs and the red-capped gnomes we’re more familiar with today, but it’s certainly believable that the idea of comical miniature garden figures was inspired by the earlier fashion. The garden gnomes that started to be mass produced in Germany in the mid-19th century also had roots in northern European folklore, recalling the legendary creatures – sometimes benevolent, sometimes malign – that worked in the mines or as household spirits. The Romantic movement’s ‘rediscovery’ of folk and fairy tales no doubt influenced the desire to decorate houses and gardens with such folkloric figures.

Gnomes from Scandiavian folklore working in a mine and a stable, from Olaus Magnus, Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus ... (Rome, 1555)  432.k.18.

It was the aristocracy again that played a part in bringing the gnome to Britain. Dwarfs were among the wooden carvings made in Switzerland and the Black Forest region which were popular as souvenirs with British travellers in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and when stone and plaster figures began to be made, they too were brought home. In 1847 the Victorian Baronet Sir Charles Isham built a rock garden in the grounds of his home which he populated with gnomes acquired from Nuremberg, and other wealthy landowners created similar displays. However, as if to prove that there is always a backlash to the popularity of gnomes, Isham’s daughters allegedly destroyed his collection after his death by shooting at them with air rifles.

Pages from a catalogue of gnomes and other figures offered for sale in the 19th century by the firm of Ludwig Möller in Erfurt (image from Wikimedia Commons)

Gnomes achieved wide popularity both in Germany and abroad in the later 19th century and a whole gnome-making industry grew up, especially in the Thuringian town of Gräfenroda. German gnome manufacturers, some of which survive to this day, issued catalogues of gnomes in all sorts of poses and carrying various tools and other accoutrements. Initially many held mining tools, reflecting the folkloric association with mines, but as the association with gardens developed these were often replaced by wheelbarrows, rakes and the like. After the First World War there was a slight dip in the popularity of gnomes among Germany’s wartime enemies, but this did not last, and gnomes were given a further boost after 1937 by Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

However, gnomes did slide down the social scale again, coming to be seen as examples of kitschy bad taste. With a few exceptions, they have famously been banned from the Chelsea Flower Show for most of its existence, and they are an easy literary symbol for small-minded suburbia. Ingeborg Wendt’s novel Die Gartenzwerge (Hamburg, [1960]; F10/0768), for example, is a story of small-town politics in which the hapless and compromised protagonist is a garden gnome manufacturer. Similarly, the stories in Jacques-Étienne Bovard’s collection Nains de Jardin (Yvonand, 1996; YA.1997.a.14873) satirise the complacency of bourgeois Swiss life, and the book’s blurb suggests that ‘the garden gnome is in each of us who carry it as a permanent attraction to all forms of mediocrity.’

A garden gnome in Brazil, from Orlando Azevedo, Jardim de anões (Curituba, 1992) YD.2023.a.386 

Nonetheless, gnomes are still going strong, and since the late 20th century have increasingly been available in novel forms such as ‘rude’ gnomes (mooning, flashing etc.) and gnomes caricaturing politicians and other public figures. There’s even some cultural love for gnomes as evidenced by the museums, websites and festivals dedicated to them. Portuguese photographer Orlando Azevedo was so delighted to find them in gardens in southern Brazil, originally brought by Polish and German immigrants, that he made a project of photographing them. The gnomes get a chance to strike back in Norman Collins’s curious novel Little Nelson which depicts a Britain terrorised by a garden gnome revolt. And gnomes were awarded their own Google doodle in 2018.

Title page of Norman Collins, Little Nelson: a Tale for Adults and other Children (London, 1981; X.950/18826)

Finally, there’s the concept of the ‘travelling gnome’, where people take garden gnomes on their holidays and photograph them next to famous sights. This was popularised by the 2001 French film Amélie where the main character steals her father’s garden gnome and gets a flight attendant friend to take such pictures of it which she then sends to her father to encourage him to travel himself. Perhaps we’ll even see some travelling gnomes popping up at the British Library while Unearthed is still running!

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

References/further reading:

Baslilus Belser, Hortus Eystettensis, sive diligens et accurata omnium plantarum, florum, stirpium, ex variis orbis terræ partibus, singulari studio collectarum, quæ in celeberrimis viridariis arcem episcopalem ibidem cingentibus, hoc tempore conspiciuntur, delineatio et ad vivum repræsentatio ([Altdorf], 1613) 10.Tab.29.

Dieter Pesch, Zwerge, Hofzwerge, Gartenzwerge. Eine Genealogie des Gartenzwerges. Ausstellung im Niederrheinischen Freilichtmuseum, Grefrath, 2. September-28. Oktober 1973 (Grefrath-Dorenburg, 1973) X.0419/31.(1.)

Günther Bauer, Barocke Zwergenkarikaturen von Callot bis Chodowiecki (Salzburg, 1991) YA.1995.b.10647

Günther Bauer, Salzburger Barockzwerge: das barocke Zwergentheater des Fischer von Erlach im Mirabellgarten zu Salzburg (Salzburg, 1989) YA.1993.a.24163

Twigs Way, Garden Gnomes: a History (Oxford, 2009) YK.2011.a.18247

Martin Cornwall, The Complete Book of the Gnome (Basingstoke, 1987) LB.31.b.14936

Dieter Hanitzsch/Rolf Cyriax, Der wunderbare Gartenzwerg: eine notwendige Kulturgeschichte mit Bildern (Munich, 1981) L.42/1758

Earlier in May we opened the exhibition Unearthed, The Power of Gardening at the British Library. The exhibition, of which I am a co-curator, explores and celebrates the social and political history of gardening in British history and how gardening can be a force for change. It has been a great opportunity to showcase some of the British Library’s botanical and horticultural treasures, and curating it made me think of Italian collection items that could well dialogue with some of the exhibits.

Trees

Planting trees is one of the most sustainable things that we can do for the environment, as they play a crucial role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. The exhibition shows The Crafte of Graffynge and Plantynge of Trees, one of the earliest publications about planting and propagating trees, printed during the reign of King Henry VIII.

Title page of The Crafte of Graffynge and Plantynge of Trees (London, 1518. C.122.bb.42.)

I would have shown it next to L’architettura degli Alberi, a botanical drawing masterwork written and illustrated by landscape architects Cesare Leonardi and Franca Stagi over 20 years. It features 212 tree species hand drawn with and without foliage and with tables of seasonal colour variation. It has been defined ‘a Bible for tree lovers’ and is an essential tool for planning gardens and integrating trees in the urban landscape.

Pages from L’architettura degli Alberi (Milan, 2018) Awaiting shelfmark

The Garden City

Unearthed, The Power of Gardening looks at the pioneering ideas of Ebenezer Howard, who put forward the idea of garden cities in this 1898 book To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform. Howard wanted to create new planned communities across Britain that established a ‘joyous union of town and country’ and his ideas have influenced urban planning ever since.

Plan of an ideal garden city from Ebenezer Howard, To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform (London, 1898) 08275.i.25.

One of the most recent developments on the concept of garden city is Fitopolis, la città vivente, a book by neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso, that envisions a future where cities are transformed into ‘living cities’ integrated with nature. Mancuso proposes a radical shift from current urban models, emphasizing the importance of incorporating plants and nature into urban spaces.

Fitopolis, la città vivente (Bari, 2024) Awaiting shelfmark

The Botanical Garden

The botanical gardens at Kew and Calcutta, as well as those of Mary Somerset, are described in a section titled Gardening and the global exchange, as places to display plant knowledge and the British Empire’s botanical advancements from the 18th century onwards. The map below shows how Kew Gardens originated as gardens of separate royal residences in Richmond and Kew, which merged at the time when it was produced, under the rule of King George III. The gardens continued developing to host the ‘largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world’.

The Royal Gardens of Richmond and Kew (1771) Maps.K.Top.41.16.k.2.TAB.

This made me think of the oldest surviving botanical garden in the world, in Padua. The first Orto dei Semplici (the garden of ‘simples’, where the simples are the principles derived from medicinal plants) was built in 1545 by the Venetian Republic, to grow medicinal and exotic plants, and to teach students at the University of Padua how to use them.

The 1591 book which describes L’Horto de i Semplici di Padoua comes from Sir Hans Sloane’s personal library. It illustrates the garden’s unique design, still unchanged nowadays, and lists all the plants included. The original design consists of a central circumference, symbolizing the world, surrounded by a ring of water. A square is inscribed in the circumference, divided into four units by orthogonal paths, oriented according to the main cardinal directions. This shape is a representation of the universe adopted since ancient times and recalls the scheme of the ideal city of the Renaissance.

L’Horto de i Semplici di Padoua, oue si vede primieramente la forma di tutta la pianta con le sue misure (Venice, 1591) 972.b.3.(1.)

These two examples show how the concept of ‘botanical garden’ can be interpreted in different ways. I hope this blog makes you want to visit the exhibition and think of how old and new foreign language books can tell many more stories around the theme of gardening.

Valentina Mirabella, Curator, Romance Collections

Unearthed, The Power of Gardening is at the British Library until 10 August 2025.

The annual Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages will take place on Monday 9 June 2025 in the Foyle Room at the British Library in London.  The programme is as follows:

11.00 Registration and coffee

11.30 Alyssa Steiner (London): Caught in the middle? Block books at the British Library

12.25 Lunch (own arrangements)

1.30 Jack Nunn (Oxford): Anthology making in an age of discovery: French maritime poetry in the print shop

2.15 Simone Lonati (Chichester): Public representation and interpretation of ‘monsters’. From the Monstrorum Historia to the dissemination of news during the English Civil War

3.00 Tea

3.30 John Goldfinch (London): Dr Rhodes, Dr Sloane and Dr Dee: a trail of catalogues and provenance

4.15 Yvonne Lewis (London): Languages for travel: John and Ralph Bankes in the 1640s and beyond

The seminar will end at 5.00 pm.

Attendance is free and all are welcome but please register in advance by contacting Barry Taylor ([email protected]) and Susan Reed ([email protected]) if you wish to attend. 

 

Vignettte from Cornelio Desimoni, Nuovi studi sull’Atlante Luxoro (Genoa, 1869) 10003.w.4.

8 May 2025 marks 80 years since the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied Forces and the celebration of victory in Europe. Jubilant crowds thronged the streets of cities across the continent, but the guns did not fall silent until 25 May, when the Partisans triumphed at the now forgotten Battle of Odžak. This last European battle of the Second World War took place in Yugoslavia, where victory over fascism came at a terrible cost: the country lost over ten percent of its population, and the material damage was on an equally vast scale. For Britain, VE Day was the culmination of a storied resistance to the Nazi juggernaut – its ‘finest hour’ – which saw the island as a beacon of freedom as the swastika cast its long shadow across occupied Europe. Yet four years earlier, while London burned in the Blitz, resistance was brewing in a remote southeastern corner of the continent, which would turn the tide of the war and persist until that final hard-won victory on 25 May.

A partisan girl from Kozara mountain, winter 1943. Illustration from Jelena Batinić, Women and Yugoslav partisans...(Cambridge, 2015) YC.2015.a.8652

The Axis powers (Nazi Germany, followed by Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria) invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia beginning in April 1941 and the country was plunged into crisis as rival factions took shape. In July 1941 Yugoslav Communist party leader Josip Broz ‘Tito’ called on Yugoslavians to unite irrespective of their ethnic and religious differences and mount a national war of liberation against the invaders, appealing to their historic tradition of opposing foreign occupation. Thus was born the Yugoslav Partisan movement, which grew from an irregular guerilla operation to become the most significant and successful anti-fascist resistance movement in wartime Europe.

The partition of Yugoslavia, 1941. Illustration from Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia...(Stanford, 2001) m02/11817

The success of the Partisans, who fought in desperate conditions and won victories against overwhelming odds, could not have been secured without the mass participation of women, one of the most remarkable phenomena of the Second World War. It is estimated that nearly two million women participated in the Partisan movement, including about 100,000 in combat roles, of whom 70 percent were under 20. 25,000 of these female soldiers were killed, and tens of thousands were wounded. Away from the front, women were active as underground fighters in occupied cities, as medical personnel and army suppliers, as political activists and as members of the national liberation committees. There are few, if any, instances in recent history where women were so deeply involved both politically and militarily in defeating an occupying enemy and establishing a new state.

A partizanka on the move. Illustration from Barbara Jancar-Webster, Women & Revolution in Yugoslavia...(Denver, 1990) 90/14790

The British Library contains key works exploring this astonishing yet undeservedly neglected aspect of the war. Jelena Batinić’s pioneering 2015 study, Women and Yugoslav partisans : a history of World War II resistance (Cambridge, 2015; YC.2015.a.8652) investigates female Partisan participation through the lens of gender, South Slavic culture, and its intersection with war. Batinić draws on primary sources and on the slim body of partizanka scholarship, including the first English-language study on the subject, Barbara Jancar-Webster’s Women & revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945 and the 2011 Serbian-language study Partizanke kao građanke : društvena emancipacija partizanki u Srbiji, 1945-1953 (‘Female partisans as citizens: social emancipation of partisan women in Serbia, 1945-1953’) by Ivana Pantelić (Belgrade, 2011; YF.2012.a.25362). The British Library holds other key Yugoslav-era sources on the subject, including Dušanka Kovačević’s Women of Yugoslavia in the National Liberation War (Belgrade, 1977; X.529/35030) and Žene Srbije u NOB (‘Women of Serbia in the National Liberation War’) (Belgrade, 1975; LB.31.b.20477).

Meeting of the Antifascist Front of Women, Dalmatia, 1943. Illustration from Dušanka Kovačević, Women of Yugoslavia in the National Liberation War

Batinić begins by surveying Yugoslavia in 1941, a patriarchal peasant society with the highest rates of female illiteracy and maternal mortality in Europe, and explores how young peasant women, who formed the bulk of partizankas, were recast as central actors in that most quintessentially masculine of activities, military combat. Following Tito’s landmark decision in February 1942 to admit women as frontline combatants – the first army of its day to officially do so - Partisan leaders recruited women through an unlikely combination of communist ideology about female emancipation and the rich tradition of freedom-fighting lore from South Slavic epic poetry, itself a product of local resistance to centuries of Ottoman occupation. This way, argued Batinić, Partisan leaders sanctioned women’s role as warriors and presented themselves as bearers of the ‘great heroic tradition of the Yugoslav peoples’. This tradition was by no means exclusively male – Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro had a long history of women participating in liberation struggles. Then there was the blunt reality that for many women, taking up arms and going ‘into the woods’ was, for all its hardships, preferable to living in terror in the occupied towns, because it offered the possibility of autonomy and of self-defense.

Fourth Montenegrin Proletarian Brigade, Bosnia, 1942. Illustration from Jelena Batinić, Women and Yugoslav partisans

Women’s dramatic entry into the political and military fray of Yugoslav society led to the formation in June 1942 of the Yugoslav Antifascist Front of Women (AFW), one of the largest and most active women’s mass movements in the region. The AFW undertook activities crucial to the war effort: supplying Partisan units on the move, providing care for orphans, and coordinating operations between the liberated and occupied territories. From 1944, partizankas were gradually withdrawn from the front line and transferred to political or administrative functions, although women remained active in most units until the final liberation.

Cover page, 1st edition of ‘The Vojvodina Woman at War’. Issued by the Vojvodina Antifascist Front of Women, January 1944. The slogan reads ‘death to fascism, freedom to the people!’. Illustration from Bosa Cvetić, Žene Srbije u Narodnooslobodilačkoj borbi (Belgrade, 1975) LB.31.b.20477

Partisan life was physically and mentally gruelling, testing the very limits of human endurance. A partizanka and doctor, Saša Božović, recalled typhus victims rolling in the snow to relieve their high fevers, before hauling supplies to their comrades up icy mountain paths. Detachments would come upon villages which had been burned to the ground, sometimes with the families locked inside the houses, and find themselves caring for children who emerged from the smouldering ruins. Wounded soldiers had to be rescued from the battlefield under enemy fire, children were murdered in front of their parents. Yet survivors above all recalled the sense of camaraderie, conviction and solidarity which pulled them through the horror.

A partisan column in the snow, Macedonia. Illustration from Dušanka Kovačević, Women of Yugoslavia in the National Liberation War

A makeshift partisan hospital in a peasant hut, Serbia. Illustration from Bosa Cvetić, Žene Srbije u Narodnooslobodilačkoj borbi

Pregnancy and motherhood were also part of the female Partisan experience, often in heart-rending circumstances. Saša Božović’s march through the mountains of Herzegovina in the winter of 1941 claimed the life of her three-month old daughter, who died of exposure and starvation. Partizanka Đina Vrbica was ordered to kill her own baby, after giving birth on the battlefield, as the infant’s crying was making an ambush impossible. The order was later withdrawn as the female officer charged with the task was too distraught to comply; this left Vrbica to struggle through the wilderness with a rifle in one arm and an infant in the other. She finally left the baby in the care of a local family but was killed in battle when she returned in search of her. Many partizanka casualties were reported to be pregnant when they were killed, despite a ban on Partisan marriages and penalties imposed for sexual relations among the rank and file.

Kosovar women bringing medical herbs for a hospital. Illustration from Dušanka Kovačević, Women of Yugoslavia in the National Liberation War

A children’s care centre in liberated Croatia, 1942. Illustration from Dušanka Kovačević, Women of Yugoslavia in the National Liberation War

For most of the war, Hitler and his collaborators refused to recognise the Partisans as legitimate belligerents, and their troops acted accordingly, shooting hostages and treating combatants, prisoners and civilians alike with brutality. Partizankas were not spared the atrocities inflicted on their male counterparts and suffered additional indignities, including sexual violence. 17-year-old Lepa Radić, who was hanged by the Nazis in 1943, and many other young women who were tortured and executed became celebrated martyrs and icons of partizanka fortitude and defiance, with many achieving the status of National Hero. They were dragged to death behind vehicles, thrown into disused wells, stretched on the rack, and worse. Survivors later recalled the virtually unprintable details of the tortures they withstood at the hands of their captors. Žene Srbije u NOB, a haunting Yugoslav-era compendium about women in the war, features short biographies and portraits of fresh-faced smiling teenagers, their hair set in victory rolls, with details of their war activities, and if known, their fate. The same girls sometimes appear a page later, as corpses hanging from lampposts, or with features mutilated beyond recognition.

Milka Travar, company commander and machine gunner of the First Proletarian Brigade. Illustration from Dušanka Kovačević, Women of Yugoslavia in the National Liberation War (Belgrade, 1977) X.529/35030

The partizanka story has a personal resonance. My grandmother, Savka Korov (1926-2004), fled her occupied home village in northern Serbia as a 16-year-old and followed her elder brother into the Partisan ranks in 1942, enlisting in the Second Proletarian Brigade and changing her name to Slavica to conceal her identity and prevent reprisals against her family. She endured bitter winters in the rugged mountains of Herzegovina, surviving bouts of typhus and frostbite, and saw active combat at the Battle of Sutjeska (May-June 1943), one of the region’s deadliest battles, where over 15 percent of troops were female. Sutjeska was a crucial moment for the Partisans, whose success in thwarting better-equipped Axis forces with over six times as many troops and losing nearly one third of their own troops, turned the tide of the war in Yugoslavia and won them unconditional support from Churchill and the Western Allies. It marked the last major Axis offensive against the Partisans and saw British Special Operations Executive (SOE) soldiers parachuted into Montenegro at the height of hostilities at Churchill’s behest to make official contact with Tito. The only trace of this carnage in my grandmother’s later years was a scar on her forehead where a bullet had whistled past, separating her from death by mere millimetres. Like her, many had endured the same hardships; unlike her, not all had the fortune to witness the defeat of fascism and to rebuild their lives. She christened her firstborn son after the war Slobodan, meaning ‘free’, symbolic of the collective sense of hard-won liberation which defined her generation.

Women’s meeting in Montenegro, with the Yugoslav flag. Illustration from Dušanka Kovačević, Women of Yugoslavia in the National Liberation War

Batinić goes on to explore the changing fortunes of the partizanka in the (ex)-Yugoslav collective memory – from her iconic status in the early post-war era to virtual oblivion and trivialisation from the 1990s onwards. The demise of socialism and the collapse of Yugoslavia condemned many of its founding icons, including the partizanka, to the proverbial scrap-bin of history, victims of the collective identity crisis which plagued post-Yugoslav society. In the West, as an historical figure, she is obscure and unacknowledged. Yet the partizanka deserves a different and better fate. Irrespective of her ideology, religion or ethnicity, the resilience, sacrifice and extraordinary contribution of a lost generation of young women, many of whom paid the ultimate price to halt the fascist juggernaut, deserves recognition, celebration and most of all, respect.

Partizankas and organisers of the AFW in Macedonia. Illustration from Dušanka Kovačević, Women of Yugoslavia in the National Liberation War

Savka Andic, Acquisitions South

Further reading:

Vladimir Dedijer, The war diaries of Vladimir Dedijer. (Ann Arbor, 1990). YC.1991.b.425

Ben Shepherd, Terror in the Balkans: German armies and partisan warfare. (Cambridge, Mass, 2012). YC.2012.a.9950

Lydia Sklevicky, Konji, žene, ratovi. (Zagreb, 1996). AFŽ Arhiv, https://afzarhiv.org/items/show/720.

Heather Williams, Parachutes, patriots and partisans: the Special Operations Executive and Yugoslavia 1941-1945. (London, 2002). m04/17827

4 May – Dutch National Remembrance Day

On a small plot in the northern part of Mill Hill Cemetery  around 60 people are gathered around the 254 graves of Dutch serviceman and women of the Dutch Armed Forces, the Dutch Merchant Navy, Dutch pilots who served in the RAF, and civilians who were killed during the Second World War in the UK. It is the evening of 4 May 2025, National Remembrance Day in the Netherlands. Leading the ceremony are an officer of the Dutch Army, the Dutch Ambassador and the Minister of the Dutch Church. This year the ceremony will mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. 80 years since VE Day is the theme this year.

80 jaar vrijheid: Nationale Herdenking 4 mei 2025 19.00 uur lokale tijd. (London, 2025). Awaiting shelfmark.

The Dutch remember and celebrate on two consecutive days, because remembrance and liberation are inextricably linked.

 National Remembrance Day 4 May 2025 at Mill Hill Cemetery.

The oldest person present was one of three last survivors of the women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück: Selma van de Perre-Velleman.

Selma van de Perre lays a wreath at the Dutch Field of Honour, Mill Hill Cemetery. Photo by Luke McKernan.

After the war Selma moved to London to join her two brothers David and Louis who too had survived the war. There she worked as a journalist and teacher and became active in the commemorations of Ravensbrück by visiting the camp with schoolchildren. She attends the Remembrance ceremonies at Mill Hill every year. In 2020 her memoir My Name Is Selma (2020) was published, both in Dutch and in English. The title refers to the fact she had to keep her real name secret and live under other names.

Selma van de Perre, Mijn Naam is Selma (Amsterdam, 2020) YF.2022.a.3688.

Selma van de Perre, My Name is Selma, translated by Alice Tetley-Paul and Anna Asbury. (London, , 2020).  ELD.DS.548100

Younger generations are taking over from the older ones. As every year, pupils from the Dutch Regenboogschool in London wrote poems for Remembrance Day, and two of these were read out by the pupils themselves. The poems are also printed in the programme booklet.

5 May VE Day / Liberation Day

For the Dutch the 5th of May is not so much a Victory Day as a Liberation Day. The Netherlands had been occupied by Nazi Germany for five years and had suffered oppression, hardship, hunger, fear and death and had seen 75% of its Jewish citizens taken away to be be killed in concentration camps. The Dutch Indies has been occupied by the Japanese from 1941 until August 1945, where many suffered equally badly. So, when the German troops in the Netherlands, northwestern Germany and Denmark capitulated on 4 May to Field Marshal Montgomery, coming into force on 8 AM on 5 May, people were ecstatic. They came out into the streets, dressed in the national colours and orange and put up flags everywhere.

However, it was not until 8 May that Allied forces were given the green light by the High Command to proceed towards the big cities such as The Hague.

Canadian troops enter The Hague, surrounded by an almost delirious crowd, from J.G. Raadgever, Van Dollen Dinsdag tot de Bevrijding. (Amsterdam, 1945) X.700/2686

For three days people were held in limbo. They were not entirely certain whether the Germans had really capitulated, which was seized on by the latter to issue a notice that ‘rumours’ about a capitulation were false. Their police force also arrested journalists and newspaper editors who had emerged from years of clandestinely printing newspapers and were now issuing liberation editions of their papers. This dampened celebrations considerably.

Even after 5 May people were killed. During festivities on Dam Square on 7 May German soldiers who had retreated to the Groote Club at Dam Square, got into a fight with Dutch Internal Forces and started firing at the crowds. More than 30 people were killed. Exact details of what happened never became fully clear. 

In Van Dollen Dinsdag tot de Bevrijding, (‘From Crazy Tuesday to the Liberation’) by J.G. Raatgever Jr. the author remembers how he shed tears watching the formations of Dutch fascists lining the streets like an ‘unmovable block of black reaction’, in May 1940 and how he again had tears in his eyes as he watched Canadian soldiers driving through the street as liberators in May 1945.

For the 80th anniversary of the end of the war in the Netherlands there is a packed programme of festivities throughout the country, with events on a national level organised by the Nationaal Comite 4 en 5 mei. [https://www.4en5mei.nl/ ] (There is an English language version).

Last night the ‘Bevrijdingsvuur’ (Liberation Fire) was lit in Wageningen, the city where the capitulation for The Netherlands was signed. From there the flame is taken to 14 places across the country to start the festivities. I remember the 5th of May 1970 when my father was part of a team of athletes who took the flame in a running relay from Nijmegen to Deventer, a distance of 60 Km.

Albert Kingma running with the Freedom Torch.

This year the traditional 4 and 5 May lectures are read by journalist and broadcaster Philip Freriks and by the Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk. The lectures are published together in one volume, demonstrating that remembrance and liberation are inextricably linked. They are also available online. 

Marja Kingma, Curator Germanic Collections, Dutch Languages

 

In Russia, attitudes towards homosexuality ebbed and flowed, ranging from benign toleration in the wake of the October Revolution, through stigmatisation and criminalisation of same-sex (particularly male) desire in the Stalin era, to state-sponsored and politically motivated homophobia fostered by the current Russian regime. In the last decade, pro-Kremlin media outlets have peddled the idea of LGBTQ rights as a product of the decadent West and a tool of hybrid warfare posing a threat to national security and the Russian way of life. Much ink has been spilled over the censorship of LGBTQ content in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where progressive authors are deemed ‘foreign agents’ and books referencing ‘non-traditional sexual relationships’ are sold wrapped in plastic and labelled with an adult content warning. While the picture is bleak, the country’s independent publishers attempt to challenge the regime by exposing and, ultimately, circumventing state censorship. This blog highlights works centred on LGBTQ experiences that attracted swathes of readers and caused a stir among Russian lawmakers.

Since the early 2010s, Russia’s stance on LGBTQ issues has been radically conservative. The legal enshrinement of compulsory heterosexuality and the systematic oppression of queer people began with the notorious anti-LGBTQ law, which severely restricted the ability to speak and educate about sexuality and gender issues. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin’s regime has tried to frame the conflict as a re-enactment of the Great Patriotic War, portraying Russia as a bulwark of tradition and vilifying the proponents of LGBTQ rights, secularism, and multiculturalism as modern-day fascists. Soon after Russian tanks rolled across Ukraine’s borders, the Kremlin initiated another ruthless crackdown on the LGBTQ community. This time around, the law introducing a complete ban on ‘gay propaganda’ was prompted by a teenage romance novel set at a Young Pioneer camp.

Covers of Leto v pionerskom galstuke and O chem molchit lastochka by Kateryna Sylvanova and Elena Malisova redesigned to comply with anti-LGBTQ laws in Russia. In order to draw attention to the censorship of literature, the publisher labelled the covers with Article 29.5 of the Russian Constitution. The Article reads: “The freedom of mass media shall be guaranteed. Censorship shall be prohibited.” Awaiting shelfmarks

Leto v pionerskom galstuke (‘Summer in a Pioneer Tie’), co-authored by Kateryna Sylvanova and Elena Malisova, is a lyrical coming-of-age novel about the clandestine relationship between two men who met at a summer camp in Soviet Ukraine in the 1980s. The book is not sexually explicit. Instead, the authors tenderly describe the experience of falling in love for the first time. Initially published in 2021 on a fan-fiction website, it was discovered by Popcorn Books, an imprint specialising in queer fiction. The book proved a runaway success, selling over 200,000 copies in its first year of publication. In 2022, it became the target of a witch hunt after the militant nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin called for the publishing house to be burned down. The novel and its sequel, O chem molchit lastochka (‘What the Swallow Won’t Say’), were hastily withdrawn from sale. The authors were declared ‘foreign agents’ and forced to flee the country.

As the term ‘propaganda of non-traditional relations’ remains undefined in the legislation, writers and editors have found themselves forced to guess what the unwritten rules are. For fear of charges for the violation of the draconian law, some publishers scrambled to censor LGBTQ themed literature ahead of the implementation of the new law in December 2022. One notable example was Max Falk’s debut novel Vdrebezgi (‘Shattered’), released by LikeBook in October 2022. With the author's consent, the publisher took the precaution of painting over approximately 3% of the text that contained descriptions of an intimate relationship between two men. The decision to visibly redact the ‘controversial’ sections rather than omit them was also made to draw public attention to state censorship without technically defying it. Despite these efforts, the novel was withdrawn from sales shortly after its publication.

Cover of Vdrebezgi by Max Fal'k. Awaiting shelfmark

Censorship has been equally pronounced in translated literature. Translated works are rarely acquired for the British Library's Russian Collection. However, we collect and preserve books targeted by the regime as they document the struggle for human rights and freedom of speech in Putin's Russia.

In April 2024, the publishing holding AST announced that several books capturing LGBTQ experiences were pulled from its website to comply with anti-gay propaganda laws, including Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (‘Malen’kaia zhizn’), Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (‘Pesn’ Akhilla’), James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (‘Komnata Dzhovanni’), and Michael Cunningham’s A Home at the End of the World (‘Dom na kraiu sveta’). Furious at having to withdraw titles, AST released Roberto Carnero’s biography of the openly gay Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini with whole pages relating to his sexual orientation demonstratively inked out. The publisher sarcastically remarked that the redactions made the book ‘interactive’ as they allowed the reader to decide for himself whether to seek out the censored material through alternative channels. The initial print run of 1.500 copies sold out immediately, and another one was ordered to keep up with the demand.

Cover of Pazolini. Umeret’ za idei, the Russian translation of Roberto Carnero’s book Pasolini: ‘Dying for One’s Own Ideas (Awaiting shelfmark). On the right, cover of the Italian original Morire per Le Idee: vita letteraria di Pier Paolo Pasolini (Milano, 2010) YF.2011.a.2102

Censored pages from Pazolini. Umeret’ za idei by Roberto Carnero. Awaiting shelfmark

Pages from Morire per Le Idee: vita letteraria di Pier Paolo Pasolini by Roberto Carnero (Milano, 2010) YF.2011.a.2102

The blacked out sections of Carnero’s novel, totalling some 70 out of 400 pages, deal with Pasolini’s private life. However, a cursory reading of the Italian original reveals that the content is far from being obscene or scandalous. The heavy-handed redactions, prompted by the passages of law hostile to the LGBTQ community, had turned the book into a celebrated object of art, a powerful attribute of performance. 

With its opaque formulations, the anti-LGBTQ legislation gave rise to a culture of fear and self-censorship. The books featured in the blog transgress the boundaries of censorship and generate meanings, bringing LGBTQ struggles back into the light. They also illuminate the simple truth: Love is Love. 

Hanna Dettlaff-Kuznicka, Curator of Slavonic and East European Collections

References/Further reading:

Chris Ashford, Research handbook on gender, sexuality and the law (Cheltenham, 2020) ELD.DS.519753

Radzhana Buyantueva, The emergence and development of LGBT protest activity in Russia (Basingstoke, 2022) ELD.DS.736424

Laurie Essig, Queer in Russia: a story of sex, self, and the other (Durham, NC, 1999) 99/31881

Dan Healey, Russian homophobia from Stalin to Sochi (London, 2018) YC.2018.a.1153

Jon Mulholland, Gendering nationalism: intersections of nation, gender and sexuality (Basingstoke, Hampshire, 2018) ELD.DS.412134

Conor O'Dwyer, Coming out of communism: the emergence of LGBT activism in Eastern Europe (New York, 2018) m18/.11529

Dennis Scheller-Boltz, The discourse on gender identity in contemporary Russia: an introduction with a case study in Russian gender linguistics (Hildesheim, 2017) YC.2019.a.6769

Valerii Sozaev, Nasha istoriia: zametki i ocherki o LGBT v Rossii (Saint Petersburg, 2018) YP.2019.a.5058

Valerie Sperling, Sex, politics, and Putin: political legitimacy in Russia (Oxford, 2015) YC.2015.a.3806

Galina Yuzefovich, Weapons of the Weak: Fighting Literary Censorship in Contemporary Russia