Roskomnadzor Has Pulled Off an Incredible Bit of Trickery. From Now On, the List of Banned Books Is Banned in Russia...

Roskomnadzor has pulled off an incredible bit of trickery. From now on, the list of banned books is banned in Russia.

The list has not been canceled. It remains in force. Shops, libraries, and reading rooms are required to remove, pulp, burn, or pour into concrete any literature banned in the Russian Federation.

Passing something along “to read” privately, “from hand to hand,” is almost not punishable. The maximum possible unpleasantness is five years in a general-regime penal colony “for distributing extremism.” By today’s standards, a mere trifle.

The list is extensive. It contains more than 4,000 titles.

However, the FSB and RKN decided to create an excellent quest out of thin air.

Now you can easily go to prison for a seditious book, but what exactly counts as seditious is unknown. Because it is “classified.”

In the USSR, everything was clearer. “Samizdat” and “tamizdat” were forbidden. No options there: three years or exile to a settlement in the northern regions.

Books published by Soviet presses after 1928 were, by definition, in the category of permitted material. They could, of course, rake you over the coals at a Party meeting, but they did not jail you.

Now the game has become more complicated and more entertaining. Some of the seditious material is perfectly ordinary Russian editions from before 2022.

But!

Citizens and organizations, libraries and reading rooms are expected to “sense” banned literature from a distance of two or three meters and not even pick it up.

Even the fiercest KGB-style censorship never came up with beauty like that.

Nevzorov

@nevzorovtv