A dark chapter

In 2025, Russia’s book industry faced raids, bans, and self-censorship. The year ahead could be even worse.

Last year was arguably the worst one yet for Russia’s publishing industry. Bookstores were raided; independent publishing houses were shuttered; publishers pulled beloved novels from sale; and an increasing number of books came out in censored form. While the book business has long been one of the riskiest in the country, the degree of pressure on the industry was still striking — and it’s only growing more intense. At Meduza’s request, literary critic Alex Mesropov takes stock of how the Kremlin reshaped the Russian book industry in 2025.

On December 18, Russian police raided bookstores in at least three cities. This time, the target was Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness, published by the company Azbuka. Following the raids, the book was pulled from sale.

First published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness was met with international acclaim and was even translated into Russian during the Soviet era. It explores themes of androgyny, interrogating gender and sexual stereotypes — which, by all appearances, is precisely what Russian security forces found objectionable.

But this was far from the first such incident in 2025. The Russian authorities began raiding bookstores back in the spring, when law enforcement searched the homes of shop owners in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk. If in 2024 officials focused primarily on whether books carried the required “foreign agent” labels, in 2025 they increasingly targeted alleged “LGBT literature” or supposed links to “undesirable organizations.” For bookstores, these raids have so far resulted only in misdemeanor cases, but publishers have already faced felony charges.

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In May, employees of the publishing houses Popcorn Books and Individuum were accused of “organizing the activities of an extremist organization” — namely the fictitious “international LGBT public movement.” As Re:Russia noted in an analysis of the so-called “publishers’ case,” this marked an unexpected shift in the pattern of Moscow’s repression: previously, felony cases tied to “LGBT propaganda” hadn’t been standard practice. In this sense, 2025 became a turning point. In September, the individuals involved in the “publishers’ case” were added to the government’s official registry of “terrorists and extremists.”

Censorship

In July, former Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoy published an article proposing that Russia officially revive the institution of censorship. The idea was met with mixed reactions — some mocked it, while others expressed sympathy. Supporters argued that clear, formal rules might actually help booksellers and publishers avoid unnecessary risks.

Censorship in the classic sense — in which materials must be approved by the authorities before publication — still doesn’t exist in Russia, and it doesn’t look like it will be reinstated anytime this year. The Kremlin seems to prefer the current approach, which allows it to go after almost anyone in the book world if needed, from regional library staff to “patriotic” writers like the far-right nationalist Alexey Prokhanov.

Self-censorship

In recent years, pro-war Z activists have increasingly used denunciations to go after anyone they don’t like. Unsurprisingly, this has led to widespread self-censorship among writers, publishers, and booksellers — and in 2025, this became the norm.

The launch of the “publishers’ case” sparked a dramatic wave of self-censorship. Russia’s largest publisher, Eksmo, twice asked bookstores to “dispose of” 50 titles, including André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name. Following the company’s lead, Trading House BMM sent letters demanding that 37 titles be “removed from sale, returned, or destroyed,” among them works by Jeffrey Eugenides and Slavoj Žižek. In December, Russia’s largest e-book retailer, LitRes, announced it had pulled 4,500 titles from sale due to uncertainty over “how to label this content.”

Black bars in books have become commonplace. Just a year ago, readers were shocked by a heavily redacted biography of Italian poet and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini; today, blacked-out lines appear in books from nearly every Russian publisher, from high-brow independent presses to corporate giants like Eksmo. Entire pages have been censored in new novels by Michael Cunningham and Salman Rushdie, as well as in books about Simone de Beauvoir and Anna Akhmatova.

Contemporary artists are trying to grapple with this new reality. One of the most discussed book releases of the past year was a version of Eugene Onegin reimagined by an artist known as Blue Pencil. By blacking out almost the entire text of Alexander Pushkin’s classic novel in verse, he created an entirely new work about the present day.

The black bars that now fill Russian books conceal not only references to war or LGBTQ+ topics, but also a wide range of other subjects deemed off-limits in 2025. All of the following content is effectively forbidden:

• Criticism of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine
• Anything related to LGBTQ+ issues
• Decolonial perspectives
• Comparisons between the USSR and Nazi Germany
• Descriptions of drug use
• Descriptions or methods of suicide
• Satanism (or anything resembling it)
• “Promotion of a child-free lifestyle”
• Mentions of human rights organizations banned in Russia

Printed books containing these topics are withdrawn or destroyed, and retailers who continue to sell books with banned content face fines. The publisher Ad Marginem was fined 800,000 rubles ($9,860) for printing British writer Olivia Laing’s Everybody, while the online library Mangalib was fined 14 million rubles ($172,600) to manga allegedly containing “LGBT propaganda.” And the state’s repressive tactics aren’t limited to fines: in August, the poet Glikery Ulunov was arrested in St. Petersburg on charges of “promoting suicide and sexual perversions.”

Meanwhile, Eksmo found a new tool to streamline its self-censorship. In September, a newsletter from the E.U.-based StraightForward Foundation reported that the publishing giant had begun using a Chinese AI program to screen manuscripts for “legal violations.” “This new procedure is mandatory,” the newsletter noted, “for every imprint and editorial office within the group.” The system appears efficient and convenient, and other Russian publishers are likely to follow suit.

Cancellations

As in previous years, the main news at Moscow’s Non/Fiction book fair came not from invited guests or new releases, but from those who were barred from participating. The publisher Individuum, for example, was forced to hold an alternative festival at a separate venue.

An even larger wave of outrage followed a November festival at Moscow’s GES-2 House of Culture, promoted as a celebration of “books as a way to meet people.” Instead, it became yet another display of self-censorship. Individuum’s booth was shut down without explanation an hour before the event opened. Books from the publishers NLO, Samokat, Polyn, and Compass-Gid were barred from sale after a series of chaotic decisions by organizers.

Following complaints from Z-activists, the festival also canceled appearances by authors including fiction writer Maya Kucherskaya, poet Olga Sedakova, literary critic Irina Prokhorova, poet Mikhail Aizenberg, fiction writer Olga Ptitseva, novelist Sergey Shargunov, poet German Lukomnikov, artist and writer Pavel Pepperstein, and journalist Eva Merkacheva.

Ghostwriters

In September, another scandal erupted around AST Publishing (which, like Azbuka, is part of the Eksmo conglomerate). Many of AST’s history and popular science books turned out to have been written by ghostwriters, who were often presented as foreign experts — doctors, historians, or political scientists.

A BBC News Russia investigation found that both readers and the ghostwriters themselves are dissatisfied with the practice. Readers get books full of factual errors and conspiracy theories, while ghostwriters receive low pay and no recognition. Despite the backlash, AST has shown no intention of abandoning the policy.

No end in sight

In 2025, oversight of Russia’s book industry moved from the Digital Development Ministry to the Culture Ministry. The unofficial architect of the looming ideological overhaul is widely believed to be former Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky — a proponent of grievance-based nationalism and the author of a widely criticized, fraudulent history dissertation.

Medinsky took over the Russian Writers’ Union in March. Since then, he has increased its budget sevenfold, brought the publishing house Khudozhestvennaya Literatura under his control to push the “patriotic” genre, and gained access to real estate once held by the Soviet Writers’ Union. Analysts have speculated he could serve as a “mediator” between radical patriots and the major players in the book market. Whether that actually happens — and where it might lead — remains to be seen in 2026.

For now, the Russian authorities appear to have built a near-perfect machine for controlling the publishing industry. Misdemeanor cases are no longer the main threat; security services are now manufacturing high-profile felony cases. Self-censorship has hit unprecedented levels, leaving an already fragile community of writers, independent publishers, and booksellers especially vulnerable.

Article by Alex Mesropov