Book Censorship in Modern Russia: From Glavlit to Freedom of the Press and Back Again

24 October 2024 by

Office LYMEC

| No comments yet

The history of book censorship in Russia did not begin in the Soviet Union and is almost as long as the history of Russia itself. However, for the sake of brevity, this article gives a short overview of Russian censorship under the USSR. Before focusing on the main trends of censorship in modern Russia as a tool to crack down on support for Ukraine – as well as the responses of the literary community.

The History of Censorship in Russia

Established in 1922, Glavlit was the official censorship body that strictly controlled all publications. Anything perceived as anti-Soviet or ideologically deviant was banned or altered. Glavlit allowed the Communist Party to control the narrative in Soviet society. Literature had to align with the socialist realist style, promoting the virtues of communism and Soviet life. Writers were coerced into self-censorship, knowing that publishing dissent could lead to exile, imprisonment, or worse.

The period of time in the 1950’s and 1960’s known as the ‘Khrushchev Thaw’, there was a temporary relaxation of censorship. This period saw the publication of previously banned works such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", which criticised Soviet labour camps. However, after the brief period of openness under Nikita Krushchev, censorship tightened again under Leonid Brezhnev and the Soviet Union witnessed a return to repression. Solzhenitsyn and other dissidents were either exiled or silenced, and samizdat (clandestine self-publishing) and tamizdat (publishing abroad) flourished as ways for authors to circumvent censorship.

The arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev saw the political openness that defined the end of the Soviet Union extend to books and publishing. The decree abolishing the mandatory approval of publishing 'thematic plans' in Glavlit was passed, quickly followed by the abolition of the state monopoly on books. Official closure of Glavlit came about in 1991, symbolising the official end of censorship in Russia.

After many years of almost complete freedom from the late 1980s to the early 2010s – an astonishingly long time in book years – the book industry in Russia was tragically unprepared for the repression that came upon it after 24 February 2022. After all, even the most senior and experienced of those working in book publishing and bookselling today did not live through the censorship era and therefore had no experience of survival or struggle.

Rule 1: Punish writers, not books

The censorship increased gradually, and the first targets of persecution were the writers who openly declared their anti-war stance, not their literary texts. It started with public figures like the novelist Dmitry Glukhovsky, one of Russia’s most prominent and popular writers. Glukhovsky was declared a 'foreign agent' and sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for 'discrediting the Russian armed forces' through social media posts criticising the invasion of Ukraine and his Instagram stories which condemned atrocities committed by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian civilians. For a repressive state, this approach makes perfect sense, as it takes less time to read a social media post than a book – a crucial difference for those who have an aversion to reading. Thus, Glukhovsky wasn't sentenced for his works, but for speaking out, and since it wasn't the books that suffered, publishers and booksellers had no formal grounds for protest.

There was one exception to this unspoken rule – 'Summer in a Pioneer's Necktie' by Katerina Silvanova and Elena Malisova, a bestselling romance between two teenage boys in a Soviet summer camp. This non-trivial juxtaposition of Soviet decor and a homoerotic story provoked the outrage of those who believed themselves to be zealots of both traditional morality and communist ideals (a very curious mix for those outside Russia and a very common one for those inside). Aside from calls to burn down the publishing house – albeit at night, when no one was around – there was a massive wave of public abuse and bullying. All designed to prevent the distribution of the book amongst the Russian public. To cite just one ludicrous example: in the city of Nizhny Tagil, activists of the party ‘A Just Russia – Patriots – For Truth’ bought up all available copies in the city and, apparently unable to find a better use for their purchase, donated them to the local diocese.

From Author Censorship to Book Censorship

The situation deteriorated dramatically when so-called 'patriotic activists' joined the censorship game. They began to demand not only legal action against authors who spoke out against the war in Ukraine, but also the removal of their books from the shelves and the suspension of all contractual payments. Now it wasn't just about punishing dissenting authors, but silencing the works themselves. Censorship entered a new phase where public activism, rather than legal decree, took the lead.

The official media positioned it as a Russian version of 'cancel culture', the logic of which was as follows: if The West can ‘cancel’ authors like JK Rowling for transphobic comments, then 'patriots' in Russia can cancel Lyudmila Ulitskaya (a well-known novelist and public intellectual) for her support of Ukraine. Whatever one may think of ‘Cancel Culture’, the false equivalency of this position is plain to see. In the West it is an instrument of civil society, whereas in Russia it is state-endorsed and used as an instrument of repression by the ruling party and its supporters.

The tightening of state control over cultural expression soon moved beyond the informal tactics of 'cancel culture' and into more formal and institutionalised territory. For the first time since the Glavlit era, Russia has formed a federal expert council under the Russian Book Union to assess printed and electronic books for compliance with the law and make recommendations for their withdrawal in case of violations. The nostalgic parallels with Soviet-era censorship are hard to miss, but the composition and inner workings of the 'council' remain opaque; it is hard to know whether we are dealing with preliminary censorship, as in the USSR, or 'punitive' censorship, similar to that witnessed during the late stages of the Francoist regime in Spain. What we do know is that this new 'council' has the power to withdraw books from circulation.

The Response of Publishers: Panic, Freeze or...

Initially, the response from the publishing world was divided – some panicked, others froze. Bookshops and publishers either began to play it safe and double down on caution, or pretended nothing had changed and did their best to ignore the obvious change in the air. In a growing trend of self-censorship, the less one talked about censorship in public, the slower it seemed to advance.

Some publishers, however, took a different approach – technically following the rules, but in a way that exposed the absurdity of censorship itself. In April 2024, the AST publishing house printed Roberto Carnero's book 'Pasolini. Dying for One's Own Ideas', with lines and paragraphs allegedly containing 'LGBT propaganda' (Paolo Pasolini was openly gay) blatantly blacked out. The irony of such censorship is hard to miss – by blacking out these parts of the book, the act of censorship itself became a public spectacle, drawing more attention to the very material it was trying to suppress.

In principle, we have seen something similar before. After the law on the rules for the sale of books by foreign agents was passed in the autumn of 2023 (from now on they could only be sold in packaging and with identifying marks), many independent bookstores began to wrap books by foreign agents in craft paper, cover them with hearts and flowers, tie ribbons around them and put them on a separate shelf with the title 'Our Favourite Foreign Agents'. They fulfilled all the requirements, while at the same time expressing their attitude to what was happening. What makes the Pasolini case so special is how literal and 'interactive' the experience of censorship became for the reader. Now everyone could have an 'artefact of the era', or as AST also called it, 'an attribute of a performance and an artistic statement'.

In the almost three years since the war began, book censorship in Russia has taken a colossal leap towards systematisation and tightening. Having started as random, almost thoughtless attacks directed primarily not at texts but at their authors, it has developed into a full-fledged, publicly visible censorship structure. However, the collective decision of some publishers to respond through a malicious compliance that highlights, or even ridicules, these acts of censorship is one that is worth recognising.

By refusing to sweep this new old form of censorship under the carpet any longer, the Russian literary community, while abandoning a direct and futile confrontation with the authorities, has now turned to a public allegorical communication with its target audience. Who should, in theory, be able to grasp and decipher the hidden messages. This implicit defiance serves as a reminder that although they face censorship, they are not alone in their struggle, and their shared sentiments create a sense of solidarity that challenges the oppressor's sense of control, power and, ultimately, security.