{"id":24479,"date":"2025-09-16T07:39:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T07:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/24479\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T07:39:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T07:39:13","slug":"time-to-publish-books-the-kremlin-hates-meduza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/24479\/","title":{"rendered":"time to publish books the Kremlin hates. \u2014 Meduza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meduza recently launched a\u00a0crowdfunding campaign<\/a>, and we\u2019ve been sharing more about our newsroom and how we\u00a0work. We\u2019ve already told you about the personal items<\/a> our staff hold dear, and about the stories that earned<\/a> them Redkollegia awards. Now, we\u00a0want to\u00a0tell you about a\u00a0part of\u00a0our work that\u2019s nearly invisible to\u00a0our English-language audience: our book publishing.<\/p>\n

You follow Meduza for our independent, uncompromising reporting on\u00a0Russia and the former Soviet Union, but did you know we\u2019re more than just news? For almost two years now, we\u2019ve also been releasing books \u2014 the kind that would be\u00a0impossible to\u00a0publish inside Russia.<\/p>\n

We\u00a0launched our publishing house shortly after Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of\u00a0Ukraine, when wartime censorship took hold and made it\u00a0nearly impossible to\u00a0print books that even touch on\u00a0subjects like the war, LGBTQ+ lives, drug use, or\u00a0emigration. Publishers still in\u00a0Russia began blacking out entire pages to\u00a0appease censors.<\/p>\n

\u2018Censorship turns reading into deciphering\u2019 Nine artists confront the blacked-out pages erasing war, Putin, and queer lives from Russia\u2019s books<\/a>\u2018Censorship turns reading into deciphering\u2019 Nine artists confront the blacked-out pages erasing war, Putin, and queer lives from Russia\u2019s books<\/a><\/p>\n

But some books are so\u00a0unacceptable to\u00a0the Kremlin that no\u00a0amount of\u00a0black bars or\u00a0blank pages can make their publication possible. Those are the books Meduza decided to\u00a0publish \u2014 partly because it\u00a0helps fund our newsroom, and partly because it\u00a0allows us\u00a0to\u00a0deliver independent literature to\u00a0readers who can\u2019t otherwise access it.<\/p>\n

One of\u00a0the guiding principles of\u00a0our publishing house is\u00a0that every book will eventually be\u00a0made available for free to\u00a0readers in\u00a0Russia and Belarus. Shipping them across the border is\u00a0too dangerous, but we\u2019ve found another way: all of\u00a0our titles can be\u00a0read inside Meduza\u2019s mobile app \u2014 the same place where people already read our news and listen to\u00a0our podcasts, with built-in tools to\u00a0bypass censorship.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0less than two years, Meduza has released 17 printed books. Our catalog includes fiction (from Sergei Lebedev, Konstantin Zarubin, and Daniil Turovsky), nonfiction on\u00a0culture (Anton Dolin, Alexander Rodnyansky<\/a>) and politics (Mikhail Zygar<\/a>), Ukrainian writers like Zhenia Berezhna<\/a>, translated works like Simon Shuster\u2019s The Showman<\/a> and Jonathan Littell\u2019s An\u00a0Inconvenient Place<\/a>, and even an\u00a0English-language volume<\/a> created for our \u201cNo\u201d exhibition in\u00a0Berlin this year.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s more in\u00a0the\u00a0app. In\u00a0total, 22 books are available there \u2014 12 published by\u00a0Meduza (11 in\u00a0print plus one digital-only release) and additional titles from partner publishers. Most are in\u00a0Russian, but we\u2019ve also released one book in\u00a0Ukrainian (a\u00a0translation of\u00a0educator Dima Zitser\u2019s Love in\u00a0Turbulent Times, about the challenges of\u00a0parenting amid the global crises facing families around the world \u2014 from wars to\u00a0repression, propaganda, and forced emigration).<\/p>\n

All of\u00a0our printed books are available in\u00a0Meduza\u2019s online shop<\/a> alongside our merch<\/a>, and we\u2019ve made sure they look as\u00a0good as\u00a0they read. If\u00a0you\u2019re searching for gifts for Russian-speaking friends \u2014 or\u00a0for yourself \u2014 browse our collection. And if\u00a0you can\u2019t choose, we\u00a0also have gift cards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meduza recently launched a\u00a0crowdfunding campaign, and we\u2019ve been sharing more about our newsroom and how we\u00a0work. We\u2019ve already…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[288,93,61,60,2333,2328,2331,2320,2313,2325,2315,2326,2332,2321,2309,2316,2310,2318,2319,2311,2314,2312,2330,2324,2317,2329,2327,2323,2322],"class_list":["post-24479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-2333","tag-2328","tag-2331","tag-2320","tag-2313","tag-2325","tag-2315","tag-2326","tag-2332","tag-2321","tag-2309","tag-2316","tag-2310","tag-2318","tag-2319","tag-2311","tag-2314","tag-2312","tag-2330","tag-2324","tag-2317","tag-2329","tag-2327","tag-2323","tag-2322"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}