The council includes, among others, representatives of the Russian Military Historical Society and the Orthodox Church. The background is influenced by the tightened “gay propaganda law”.
MOSCOW An expert council has been established in connection with the Russian Book Association RKS, which evaluates the legality of books, Vedomosti-talouselehti tells.
RKS is an organization of the largest publishing houses, booksellers, printers and other book and cultural industries. The RKS representative said that the council makes recommendations and the decision is made by the publisher.
The expert council includes, among others, representatives of the inspection agency Roskomnadzor, the Russian Military Historical Society, the Russian Orthodox Church, Muslim and Jewish communities.
The military history society is remembered for its attempts to prove that the victims of Stalin’s terror were not buried in the mass graves located in Sandarmoh, Karelia, Russia, but Red Army soldiers executed by the Finnish occupiers.
The expert council assesses, among other things, that the books comply with the “gay propaganda law”, which prohibits telling stories about sexual and gender minorities in a positive tone.
Historical interpretations may also be evaluated. In Russia, it is forbidden to equate the roles of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in the Second World War.
On the recommendation of the council, the publishing house group AST suspended the well-known postmodern writer this month by Vladimir Sorokin Nasledije novel sales in online stores.
The sale was also withdrawn by Michael Cunningham Home on the edge of the world and James Baldwin A room in Paris translations of novels.
The council considered the works to be in violation of the law, which prohibits the propagation of non-traditional sexual relationships and gender reassignment.
A request for an investigation into Sorokin’s novel has been made to the state investigation committee for gay propaganda and glorification of violence against children. Sorokin denied the accusations.
– In Russia, the past creeps up from behind and weighs on the present like a glacier, Sorokin wrote For Forbes magazine. According to him, literature is a free beast that goes where it wants without censorship and writers’ unions.
In December, AST withdrew from the distribution Boris Akunin and by Mikhail Bykov works, when these had expressed their support for Ukraine.