MPs will know what Senator McCain reads

Yesterday the newspaper Den’s intellectual space spread onto the Verkhovna Rada. Members and visitors of parliament at last had an opportunity to see Den’s latest books – series “Armor-Piercing Political Writing” and “Subversive Literature,” Ukraine Incognita. Top 25, and others – on parliamentary bookstore shelves.

Under the Yanukovych regime, the demand for intellectual products essentially dropped at the Verkhovna Rada. According to Svitlana, a saleslady at the parliamentary bookstore, previous-convocation MPs used to buy almost nothing. “I’ve been working for 11 years here and noticed that people’s deputies were reading less and less,” Svitlana says. “But the new MPs are more educated and know what they need. They keenly watch trends and come to the store purposefully to buy or order a concrete book.” In the seller’s words, there used to be a newsstand at the Verkhovna Rada and the Ukrainian press was much in demand, but then it was closed. “But now, I hope, new-convocation MPs will get accustomed to work and begin to buy newspapers, for example, Den which I have been buying for a long time. And it is very good that it is available at the Verkhovna Rada and MPs will be able to read the quality press.”

Those who helped Den’s Library books appear in parliament are People’s Front deputies Lilia Hrynevych (in the photo), chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee for Education and Science, and Mykola Kniazhytsky, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Culture and Spirituality.

“Today, every citizen of Ukraine, especially a state-builder (MPs are obliged to be state-builders), should have profound knowledge of the fundamental values and history of his or her people,” Hrynevych says. “It is history that found itself in the center of manipulation, particularly, on the part of an aggressive neighboring Russia. And the newspaper Den is a unique publication which shapes a patriotic and state-oriented world outlook.”