British Pop-History Book About Vikings Banned in Ukraine

The authorities in Ukraine have banned the above book because apparently it refers to Rus princes as Russian. Isn’t Russian the correct adjective from Rus? Rus is actually used as an adjective by contemporary historians in the West to differentiate it from the Muscovite Russia few centuries later. But in reality, Rus and Russia mean the same thing. The issue the Ukrainian censors have is that they are trying to promote Ukrainian history, a fraudulent framework, where there isn’t any place for Russia. Somehow it does not strike them that their ancestors thought themselves part of one Russian whole. That history is now forbidden in the country.

John Haywood is a British historian, who specializes in the history of early Europe and is an author of a number of publications that I like to call pop-history. It is the kind of stuff you find in a general bookstore in the UK.

But the more interesting is a look at the profiles of people that banned the publication in Ukraine. Ukrainian vloger Olesya Medvedeva has details.

In 2017, the Government Committee for Television and Radio Broadcast acquired the right to review the publishing industry. The people from the committee now had the right to monitor language norms and the fulfillment of quota on Ukrainian language. The committee also monitored imported literature, and would dole out fines to businesses that sold banned production, and the list of banned books and films from Russia is truly extensive, literally hundreds of titles. The committee has a special council for the analysis of published works. So who is on the council?

1. Serhiy Oleynik – a veteran of Ukraine’s war against Eastern Separatists. He is member of OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). He also wrote a column for the Censor.net.
2. Bohdan Chervak – the head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
3. Valery Gostinshchikov – writer, an author of the book Encyclopedia of Secret Societies that according to Jewish organizations talks about a World Zionist Conspiracy.
4. Taras Zdorovylo – journalist of the Ukrayina Moloda, in his articles he praises Andriy Melnyk, Nazi and Anti-Semitic inspirer of pogroms in Western Ukraine. Taras Zdorovylo also writes propagandistic articles against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.
5. Oleg Matvienko – From the organization Civic Resistance (these organizations have names like illegal Neonazi groups here in Central Europe). He is famous for bringing the secret service to trial for inaction on countering toxic literature from Russia.

There are five more people on the council but I chose to speak about these to illustrate that the ideological control over published works in Ukraine is being maintained by radical nationalists and related quacks. The entire cultural and social sphere in Ukraine has been outsourced to radical nationalists.