Circulation removal
It was difficult to avoid censorship in the Ukrainian SSR. Once the authorities began to seriously enforce these policies, printed books, newspapers, and magazines were seized and destroyed. This occurred with “The Cathedral” by Oles Honchar, which was first published in the “Vitchyzna” (Motherland) magazine. It received favorable reviews and was widely circulated, but was just as suddenly removed from bookstores throughout the USSR. “Truth Calls!” a poetry collection by Dmytro Pavlychko, was also withdrawn from sale because of a denunciation to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Work by Pavlychko and other poets was deemed to have “revived nationalist ideas.”
Books were forbidden to be sold and removed from libraries not only for being associated with undesirable or harmful content by repressive authorities. In some cases, it was enough for an “ideologically correct” author to spoil relations with the authorities and fall into disgrace. Their work, which had been present throughout the extensive network of Soviet bookstores and libraries, would completely disappear from shelves and catalogs.