15.04.15
www.thebookseller.com
FEATURE RUSSIA
21 But there is a more serious side. “This is the
beginning,” says Prokhorova. “[It becomes a debate about] what is patriotic or not patriotic. Artists with a different aesthetic become national traitors against our country. This conservative thinking becomes part of an ideological tool and it is very easy to manipulate. The accusation can be, ‘This is not patriotic, it is following US thinking’, or with experimental prose, ‘This is not our tradition’.”
‘‘
Irina Prokhorova is wary of how censorship is
beginning to impact Russia’s book trade
two years’ imprisonment for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” after filming a music video at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour), as well as that of a Novosibirsk opera director, Timofei Kulyabin, who was charged with offending Christians by his use of symbols in a production of Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” earlier this year.
A similar case could easily affect publishing,
Prokhorova believes. “People start to be afraid to publish experimental books. They expect unpleasant consequences,” she says. “A group of people could suddenly be offended by academic books—it could be an excuse for a trial.” Already legislation has been created
to prevent the use of obscene words in publications. “Contemporary poetry uses quite strong words—now you have to put the words in asterisks and package the book with plastic, and mark ‘18-plus’ on the cover.” In fact, this only serves to attract more attention, claims Prokhorova. “We say: ‘Thank you for the promotion’,” she jokes.
RUSSIA’S BOOK TRADE BY NUMBERS RUB 120.4bn
Russian publishing revenues in 2013 (equivalent to £1.49bn)
RUB 50.8bn
Russian domestic trade book sales in 2013 (£631.9m)
–2.6%
Year-on-year contraction of domestic trade book sales in 2013
RUB 18.1bn
The value of Russian book exports in 2013 (£225m)
RUB 33.1bn
The value of Russian book imports in 2013 (£411.8m)
SPECIAL SALES Publishers of her generation—who in their youth had first-hand experience of the Soviet era, growing up with a scarcity of books in the 1980s—need to teach the young people of today how to handle such an environment, Prokhorova believes. “We need to teach young people to survive, morally and psychologically, because the most ugly thing in all these types of regimes is not only direct terror but corrupting young people with hate speech. You need so much strength to oppose it,” she notes. But paradoxically, one result of Putin’s regime
may prove to be a boost for the country’s independent booksellers. “It is an interesting tendency nowadays [that] in Moscow there is the emergence of small bookstores specialising in selling high-quality literature. With the shrinking of social life, the importance of books will grow and probably these stores will proliferate,” Prokhorova says.
The book market is the last stand for independent thinking . . . the situation is worsening and the authorities are seizing control of many sides of social life, and this will inevitably come to the book market
Some big publishing houses have started
producing books celebrating Stalin, Prokhorova notes. She thinks it is an “ugly” development: “It creates future dangers for us—we publish different kinds of history.” She notes: “If the [authoritarian] system starts
working, it needs fuel. It compares to purges in Stalinist era—they started accidentally, there was no logic. The logic is in the machine of terror which needs to harass people.”
Photography by Yulia Mayorova
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