The St. Petersburg City Court confirmed the decision to ban Nowak-Jezeranski’s book “Oriental Reflections”

The complaint of the publishing house "Kogita" was rejected.

January 15, 2018 St. Petersburg the city court rejected the complaint of the Kogita publishing house against the decision of the Moscow District Court of St. Petersburg, which on August 23, 2017 recognized the information banned for distribution in Russia, a collection of the Polish publicist Jan Novak-Ezeransky "Oriental Reflections", its original layout and an electronic copy published on the Internet.

Recall that in February 2016 the entire circulation (529 copies) of the book published by the publishing house "Kogita" "Oriental Reflections" was withdrawn from typography to check for extremism. The reason was a statement that filed with the law enforcement agencies the movement "Russian Way", requiring publishers to be held accountable under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code (excitation hatred or enmity) and Art. 354.1 of the Criminal Code (rehabilitation of Nazism). May 2016 The Investigative Committee made a decision on refusal to initiate criminal proceedings. However, this solution, like several subsequent, was canceled, and the pre-investigation check continued, and in May 2017, the prosecutor of the Moskovsky district of St. Petersburg filed a lawsuit a claim for the recognition of a book in paper and electronic versions prohibited from distribution.

Taking decision on recognition of the collection as information prohibited for distribution, the court relied primarily on the thesis of the prosecutor's office that the distribution of the book violates Art. 354.1 of the Criminal Code (rehabilitation of Nazism), since it contains false information about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War.

Recall We consider the relevant provision of Art. 354.1 of the Criminal Code violating the right to freedom words, because it clearly limits the possibility of historical discussions.

IN In general, we believe that the decision of the Moscow District Court of St. Petersburg wrongly, we wrote about it in detail here . Illegal, from our point of view, and the decision of the city court.

Sources

• The City Court confirmed the ban on the book of the Polish writer Novak-Ezeransky about the role of the USSR in the war // Petersburg diary. 2018. January 15.