A bill has been introduced to the State Duma, according to which the Ministry of Culture will be able to restrict access to books by authors recognized as “foreign agents” or included in the “list of extremists and terrorists” of Rosfinmonitoring.
As part of the amendments, it is proposed to supplement the Federal Law “On librarianship.» If the bill is adopted, the Ministry of Culture will have to develop rules on the basis of which libraries will be able to restrict access to books created by “foreign agents” or authors included in the Rosfinmonitoring list.
“Currently, documents, including those created by persons included in the register of foreign agents, or persons included in the list of organizations and individuals in respect of whom there is information about their involvement, are freely posted and provided for temporary use on the stands and shelves of public libraries to extremist activities or terrorism. Thus, authors whose activities are directed against the security of the Russian Federation are being promoted and positioned,” the text of the explanatory note says.
In addition, as part of the proposed amendments, it is proposed to develop a separate procedure for access to library collections in the occupied territories of Ukraine, forcibly included in Russia. It is assumed that the Ministry of Culture will also establish the procedure for access to library collections in the LPR, DPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.
“The library collections located on the territories of the new constituent entities of the Russian Federation have been completed over the years of their presence as part of Ukraine Ukrainian propaganda literature (which is clearly anti-Russian in nature and directed against Russian socio-political leaders) and books glorifying nationalists and traitors,” the explanatory note says.
If adopted, the law will come into force on September 1, 2024. Until then, the Ministry of Culture will develop and issue the necessary regulations. The authors of the amendments were deputies Elena Yampolskaya, Dmitry Pevtsov, Alexander Sholokhov, Elena Drapeko and Olga Germanova.
“Reference standards and access procedures will be established by the Government. I always prefer direct rules, but in this case there are many different features related to the functioning of specific libraries. It makes more sense to spell out all the details in the by-laws,” Yampolskaya commented on the bill.
Previously, at the request of the authorities, books by authors recognized as “foreign agents” or who spoke out against the Russian military invasion of Ukraine began to be removed from libraries and bookstores. For example, in Moscow libraries, access to books by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, who opposed the war, was limited, and the large Russian publishing house AST and the Chitay-Gorod — Bukvoed chain of stores suspended the distribution of books by Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov.