Elections in Our Country.” The List of Books Requiring Drug-Content Labeling Was Removed from the Russian Book Union Website
“Elections in Our Country.” The list of books containing references to drugs and subject to special labeling was removed from the Russian Book Union website
The Russian Book Union (RBU) removed from its website the list of books containing mentions of drugs and subject to special labeling, Verstka noticed.
The list disappeared from the website no later than August 10, when it was supposed to be updated once again. The direct link to the page with the list also stopped opening. Users wrote about this, among other places, under RBU posts on VKontakte, but the organization did not answer questions about the problems with the list.
As a source in the Russian Book Union told Verstka, publication of the list was suspended “by order from the presidential administration”. When asked what this was connected with, the source replied: “We have elections in our country” (referring to the State Duma elections, which will take place from September 18 to 20).
According to the source, publication of the list is “frozen until September 20,” but the latest version of the book list will remain in force.
At the same time, according to Verstka, the list, which contains more than 3,000 books, has already been updated once non-publicly: on August 10, 136 entries were added to it, including Vladimir Sorokin’s De feminis, the autobiography of American rapper 50 Cent Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter, the book John Lennon. 1980. The Last Days of His Life, and other works.
🩵The last time the RBU book list was replenished publicly was on August 3. It then added Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, H. P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu, Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke, as well as the book Viktor Tsoi. Life and “Kino” by Vitaly Kalgin.
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The List Goes Missing Until Voting
The book list vanished from the site before elections, but stayed in force.
Apparently the list is riskier when voters can read it.