In the course of the Russian war against Ukraine, censorship in Russia has already been reported here.

In addition to this, censorship of “extremist content” is taking place in Russia. Such contents are collected in a list by the Russian Ministry of Justice (“Федеральный список экстремистских материалов”), based on court decisions. In total, it includes over 4000 titles: among them articles, leaflets, and brochures, books newspapers and magazines, films, videos, music and visual arts. Most of this content comes from the Internet, but there are also some print editions.

A group of students from the University of Kassel found 79 books among the officially banned content and added them to the “Kasseler Liste”. The banned books in this list focus mainly on National Socialist and Islamist content, but also include novels and light literature in isolated cases.

Recently, the president of Russia Vladimir Putin approved a law to further restrict “LGBT- propaganda”. This law will also make LGBTQ+ a taboo subject in books. However, there are currently no clear criteria as to what content should be banned, and the censorship is very arbitrary. According to journalists, books by government-critical authors who were classified as “foreign agents” were removed from bookstores and libraries.

Kassel, April 2023