One of Russia’s most well-known authors is Boris Akunin. His series of historical detective stories, adapted for screen and on-demand, have been made. He is also a state foe, having been called a “foreign agent” by the Russian government last year.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been a public enemy, according to Akunin, whose real name is Grigory Chkhartishvili.
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The least of my issues is with the label “foreign agent.” More than a thousand “foreign agents” are already there, Akunin told Al Jazeera from London.
This is nothing in comparison to the fact that a military court sentenced me to 14 years in prison for “justifying terrorism,” or the right of Ukraine to defend itself, and that it also put me on the international wanted list. ”
Before September 1, when new restrictions were in effect, book stores and other Russian retailers had already been removing Akunin’s books from shelves.
Booksellers now face difficulties in their businesses, such as possible fines and being prohibited from working with libraries and other public institutions, even though selling books by designated “foreign agents” is not formally a crime.
The law forbids the participation of ‘so-called foreign agents’ in campaigns or educational programs. Additionally, it forbids them from serving on state corporations’ boards or from receiving local government support.
In response, many retailers have recently been removing the authors from their shelves.
There was a lot of interest in these rogue authors, according to Artem Faustov, the owner of Vse Svobodny (“Everybody is Free”), an independent book store in St Petersburg.
Nearly all of the ‘foreign agent’ books had been sold out by September 1, he claimed.
We were exempt from offering discounts. And because customers kept coming, we remained open until midnight on August 31 for another two hours after closing. The last books from foreign agents are being returned to publishers. ”
Unsold books are most likely to be pulped if there isn’t enough room in the warehouse.
not in a ‘normal world’
The latest in a stringent censorship crackdown has been placed on Russia’s literary scene.
Some of the most well-known books from the Soviet Union, including Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, which features the devil visiting 1930s Moscow, were heavily redacted or completely banned. Before being completely repealed in 1993, when the new constitution made it clear that censorship was prohibited, the rules gradually loosened over the years.
However, under Putin’s presidency, censorship has steadily been back in the 21st century.
In 2013, Russia outlawed what it perceived as “LGBT propaganda,” which was ambiguous and meant in reality to include non-heterosexual relationships and identities in children’s discussions.
This law was expanded to include adults in 2022, and an “international LGBT movement” was established as an “extremist organization”. Supporting it is a criminal offense, despite the absence of any other formal organization.
The new book-related laws, which were originally intended to amend an existing education law, apply retroactively, allowing violators to be held accountable even though their actions at the time were not yet against the law.
St. Petersburg police searched the century-old bookshop Podpisniye Izdaniya in April for books with the title “LGBT ideology” and other feminism-related themes. Then, in May, three Eksmo and Individuum publishing houses’ employees were detained for “extremism” in relation to the Soviet Union’s Pioneer Summer, a gay coming-of-age story set in the Soviet Union, in May.
Since the publication of this novel, new “LGBT propaganda” laws have been passed. “We can now define extremism by selling books with queer characters,” said Felix Sandalov, former editor-in-chief of Individuum and director of the international publisher StraightForward.
He claimed that the book “drew the attention of the state” after the novel’s sales increased.
After a year tracing the paper trail from book sellers to the alleged masterminds of the LGBT conspiracy, investigators arrested Sandalov’s former colleagues in a coordinated sweep on May 15. The three suspects recently received restricted bank accounts after being added to a list of terrorists and extremists.
In the real world, such things should only occur following a court order, but we are undoubtedly not in that situation, Sandalov said.
topics of taboo
Since Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine in 2022 resulted in severe penalties for those who openly question the official accounts, including serving time in prison.
Other taboo subjects include the prohibition of “propaganda” that promotes child-free lifestyles, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union comparisons, and the “international Satanism movement”.
An updated version of the law governing the positive or neutral portrayal or discussion of illicit drugs will be implemented in the coming year.
Although lawmakers have promised that no classic works published before 1990 will be subject to the same restrictions as his books The Master and Margarita for their Satanic themes and Morphine, a young doctor who uses an opioid to treat patients, were they published today?
The Russian Book Union established a panel of experts last year to examine books for forbidden content, including those from the Orthodox Church and Roskomnadzor’s online regulatory body.
Beyond their official duties, concerned citizens, like those of the Russian Community Violent, who frequently lodge official complaints about “immoral” or “unpatriotic” content.
There are too many books available to manually check for potential heresy, Sandalov said.
There are also thousands of willing helpers eager to report anything suspicious to the authorities, “on the one hand.” Publishers have started using AI to filter out illegal content, which is a relatively recent innovation.
The Chinese AI Qwen is currently being used by the biggest player. Although it struggles to capture context, it is powerful enough to process a lot of titles. ”
In his newsletter Papercuts, Sandalov broke the news about AI.
Self-censorship involves excluding offensive passages from text in a declassified form. Complete pages have been blacked out in a biography of the gay Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini.
The literary industry has still found ways to bypass the strict standards. One way to mask controversial concepts in sci-fi or fantasy settings is by depicting alternative, dystopian Russia, for instance. Another method is printing their artwork abroad.
The opposition-minded diaspora has spawned an alternative publishing sector that is unconstrained by the constraints of the motherland. Sandalov’s StraightForward is one of these new publishers.
In Berlin, he claimed, there were more than 100 publishing houses founded by Russian immigrants in the 1920s. The majority didn’t even last ten years. However, those who survived made an impact and contributed to the tamizdat [dissident diaspora literature] system, which was a method for entering and leaving the USSR. As Russia transforms into a black hole, that perspective comes back to haunt me once more. ”
However, the reality is still depressing for Akunin, who also publishes books overseas through his BAbook publishing house.
He claimed that dictatorship and freedom of speech are incompatible.
