The Forbidden: how Russia continues the soviet tradition of book censorship

In the Soviet Union, any literary works were under strict state censorship. This gave rise to the concepts such as samizdat and tamizdat. In today’s Russia, censorship of books is on the rise again,under the laws of “foreign agents”, “discrimination of the Russian military”, “extremism” and “propaganda”. The new censorship doesn’t only target LGBTQ-themes, but also any authors and books not in accordance with the state politics. A new wave of tamizdat has already come, with new publishing houses printing books by foreign agent-authors, and books with “forbidden” themes, outside of Russia.

 

Asya Garbar will give a lecture on her thesis from University of Bergen about the history of literary censorship in Russia, who gets censored today, what books are being published outside of the country, and most importantly: why does literary censorship continue to be a powerful tool of oppression by the Russian state.