In the Russian edition of a book by Günter Grass, Joseph Stalin's name was blacked out in a phrase...

In the Russian edition of a book by Günter Grass, Joseph Stalin's name was blacked out in a phrase about the partition of Poland

In the Russian version of the novel "The Rat," by Nobel laureate Günter Grass, published by Alpina Publisher, a reference to the partition of Poland by Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler was removed. Readers reported this in their reviews of the book, as noted by "Verstka."

In the original German text, the rat, telling human history to her baby rats, says: "a certain Hitler and a certain Stalin devoured Poland whole". This fragment refers to the partition of Poland between Nazi Germany and the USSR in 1939 after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

In the Russian edition of the novel, published in 2026, the words about "a certain Stalin and a certain Hitler" were blacked out. The footnotes state that "this fragment of the text was removed in accordance with the requirements of Russian Federation law". The electronic version of the book was also censored.

Users who bought the book on Ozon complain in reviews that they were not warned about the censorship.

"For what reason are you selling a mutilated, distorted work at full price? Where is the note that you changed and cut the text? As a consumer I should know this right away, this is deception," one comment says.

🟦The apocalyptic novel "The Rat" (originally Die Rättin) was first published in 1986. Its author is the German writer and Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Günter Grass. In Russia, the novel has been published for the first time, the annotation says.

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