{"id":44385,"date":"2025-09-26T10:03:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T10:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/44385\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T10:03:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T10:03:07","slug":"russias-law-against-books-by-foreign-agents-signals-tightening-grip-censorship-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/44385\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s law against books by \u2018foreign agents\u2019 signals tightening grip | Censorship News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boris Akunin is one of Russia\u2019s most popular authors. Erast Fandorin, his series of historical detective novels, has been adapted into feature films and TV miniseries. But he is also an enemy of the state, having been branded<\/a> a \u201cforeign agent\u201d by the Russian authorities last year.<\/p>\n

Akunin, whose real name is Grigory Chkhartishvili, has been outspoken<\/a> against President Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018foreign agent\u2019 label is the least of my problems; there are already more than a thousand \u2018foreign agents\u2019,\u201d Akunin told Al Jazeera from London.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompared to the fact that a military court sentenced me to 14 years in prison for \u2018justifying terrorism\u2019 \u2013 that is, Ukraine\u2019s right to defend itself \u2013 as well as putting me on the international wanted list, this is nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bookstores and other retailers in Russia had already been pulling Akunin\u2019s books from the shelves before September 1, when new restrictions were imposed.<\/p>\n

Although selling books by designated \u201cforeign agents\u201d is not formally a crime, booksellers now, thanks to a law signed by Putin in April, risk complications for their business, such as possible fines and being barred from working with libraries and other public institutions.<\/p>\n

The law bans so-called foreign agents from participating in educational or campaign activities. It also bars them from receiving support from local authorities or being on the boards of state corporations.<\/p>\n

As such, in recent months, many retailers have been purging their stock of blacklisted authors.<\/p>\n

Artem Faustov, the proprietor of Vse Svobodny (\u201cEverybody is Free\u201d), an independent book shop in St Petersburg, said there was plenty of interest in these rogue writers.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy September 1, almost all of the \u2018foreign agent\u2019 books had been sold out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t even have to offer discounts. And on August 31, we stayed open for another two hours after closing time, until midnight, because customers kept coming. We\u2019re returning the remaining foreign agent books to publishers.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there is not enough room left in the warehouse, unsold books are likely to be pulped.<\/p>\n

Not in a \u2018normal world\u2019<\/p>\n

These restrictions are the latest episode of an increasingly tightening censorship movement imposed on Russia\u2019s literary world.<\/p>\n

Censorship was strict during the Soviet Union, and some of the era\u2019s most celebrated books, such as Mikhail Bulgakov\u2019s The Master and Margarita \u2013 in which the devil visits 1930s Moscow \u2013 were either heavily redacted or banned altogether. The rules were gradually relaxed over the years before being entirely lifted in 1993, when the new constitution explicitly forbade censorship.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, in the 21st century, censorship has been steadily returning under Putin\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Russia outlawed what it deemed to be \u201cLGBT propaganda\u201d, which was vaguely defined, but in practice meant neutral or positive portrayals or discussions of non-heterosexual relationships and identity, for children.<\/p>\n

In 2022, this law was expanded to include adults, and followed by the \u201cinternational LGBT movement<\/a>\u201d being deemed an \u201cextremist<\/a> organisation\u201d. Although no such formal organisation exists, supporting it is punishable by jail time.<\/p>\n

The new legislation on books, cast as an amendment to an education law, applies retroactively, meaning violators can be prosecuted even though what they did at the time was not yet illegal.<\/p>\n

In April, St Petersburg police raided the century-old bookshop Podpisniye Izdaniya, scouring the shelves for a list of titles containing \u201cLGBT ideology\u201d and other themes, such as feminism. Then, in May, three employees of the Eksmo and Individuum publishing houses were arrested for LGBT \u201cextremism\u201d over the 2021 publication of Pioneer Summer, a gay coming-of-age story set in the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of this novel, new amendments were introduced into the law about so-called \u2018LGBT propaganda\u2019 \u2026 Since then, wearing a rainbow pin or selling a book with a queer character can be deemed extremism,\u201d said Felix Sandalov, former editor-in-chief of Individuum and now director of the overseas publisher StraightForward.<\/p>\n

He claimed that after sales of the novel jumped, the book \u201cdrew the attention of the state\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sandalov\u2019s former colleagues were arrested in a coordinated sweep on May 15, after investigators spent a year tracing the paper trail from booksellers to the purported masterminds of the LGBT conspiracy. Recently, the three suspects were added to a list of terrorists and extremists, and had their bank accounts restricted.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, in the normal world, such things should happen only after a court decision \u2013 but we\u2019re clearly not in that world,\u201d Sandalov commented.<\/p>\n

Taboo topics<\/p>\n

Since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, wartime censorship laws have severely punished<\/a> people who publicly question the official version of events, including with jail time.<\/p>\n

Other taboo topics include bans on \u201cpropaganda\u201d that promotes child-free lifestyles, comparisons between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and the \u201cinternational Satanism movement\u201d.<\/p>\n

Next year, an updated law against \u201cnarco-propaganda\u201d \u2013 the positive or neutral portrayal or discussion of illicit drugs \u2013 will come into force.<\/p>\n

Although lawmakers have promised the rules will not apply to classic literature released before 1990, had he been published today, Bulgakov may have found his work banned again: The Master and Margarita for its Satanic themes, and Morphine, about a young, opioid-addicted doctor.<\/p>\n

Last year, an expert panel was set up by the Russian Book Union, including representatives of the Orthodox Church and the online regulatory board Roskomnadzor, to check books for forbidden content.<\/p>\n

Beyond officialdom, the authorities are assisted by concerned citizens, such as the Russian Community<\/a> vigilante group, who often file official complaints about \u201cimmoral\u201d or \u201cunpatriotic\u201d material.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, there are too many books on the market to manually check them all for potential heresy,\u201d said Sandalov.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the one hand, there are thousands of willing helpers eager to report anything suspicious to the authorities. On the other hand \u2013 and this is a relatively recent innovation \u2013 publishers themselves have started using AI to weed out illegal content.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest player currently uses the Chinese AI Qwen. It isn\u2019t perfect at catching context, but it is powerful enough to process massive amounts of titles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sandalov broke the news about AI in his newsletter, Papercuts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Self-censorship takes the form of blacking out offensive portions of text like a declassified document. In the case of a biography of the gay Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, entire pages have been blacked out.<\/p>\n

Still, the literary world has found ways of skirting the strict requirements. One is by disguising controversial ideas in sci-fi or fantasy contexts: for example, depicting an alternative, dystopian Russia. Another is by printing their works abroad.<\/p>\n

An alternative publishing industry, unbound by the constraints of the motherland, has arisen among the opposition-minded diaspora. Among these new publishers is Sandalov\u2019s StraightForward.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorically, in the 1920s, Russian emigres launched more than a hundred publishing houses in Berlin,\u201d he said. \u201cThe majority didn\u2019t last even a decade. But those that survived left an impact and played a role in tamizdat [dissident diaspora literature] \u2013 one of the ways signals were sent in and out of the USSR. That perspective feels very relevant again today, as Russia turns into a black hole.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for Akunin, who also publishes overseas through his BAbook publishing house, the reality back home is still a depressing one.<\/p>\n

\u201cDictatorship and freedom of speech are incompatible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more totalitarian a regime becomes, the more prohibitions it introduces. Democracy is \u2018everything that is not prohibited is permitted\u2019; totalitarianism is \u2018everything that is not permitted is prohibited\u2019. Russia\u2019s movement from point A to point B is almost complete.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boris Akunin is one of Russia\u2019s most popular authors. Erast Fandorin, his series of historical detective novels, has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[288,9710,93,1813,61,60,43,3589,7912],"class_list":{"0":"post-44385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-censorship","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-russia-ukraine-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44385","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=44385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}