This is not a redistribution of the book market, but a redistribution of the market for influence over minds”: co-founder of...

“This is not a redistribution of the book market, but a redistribution of the market for influence over minds”: co-founder of the publishing house Vidim Books on Dozhd, on pressure on Eksmo

Since Russian security forces have been tasked with “seriously fighting the imaginary international LGBT community,” they are trying to report some kind of result, for example by uncovering a “gray distribution scheme” for books, Alexander Gavrilov, co-founder of the publishing house Vidim Books, said on Dozhd.

🔹Yesterday, security forces detained the CEO and several other employees of the Eksmo publishing house. Media outlets reported that the publishing house’s CEO is suspected of involvement in the “distribution of the novels” “Summer in a Pioneer Tie” and “What the Swallow Keeps Silent About.” Security forces reported finding “many-thousand-copy print runs of LGBT novels” that were allegedly being sold through “gray schemes.”

“A gray distribution scheme means, apparently, that print runs are produced not in Russia but somewhere nearby. Somewhere they won’t be stopped at the printing house. When Russian book publishers move, say, their branches to Armenia or some other countries in order to buy rights there to contemporary French or American literature, because they are not sold in Russia, that is not considered a gray distribution scheme.

But when, somewhere in a neighboring country that is part of the common customs space, a print run of ‘Summer in a Pioneer Tie’ is produced, then it turns out that this is a ‘gray scheme’ for distributing LGBT among minors,” the expert says.

🔹Gavrilov believes that the searches and detentions at Eksmo are not a redistribution of the book market, but a “redistribution of the market for influence over minds,” because the Russian authorities “fiercely hate any forms of unity and association, any forms of horizontal unity:

And in that sense, it is not very important to them whether three million people watched Victoria Bonya or two million people bought the book ‘Summer in a Pioneer Tie.’ As soon as they see some uncontrolled agent of influence, they unleash hell. ‘Summer in a Pioneer Tie’ also has this remarkable feature: there is no one standing behind it. That is, this is not a story in which some secret forces promoted the book... No. It is simply that two girls wrote fan fiction, and it became wildly popular. We know of such cases in world literature.

🔹In Gavrilov’s opinion, the current practice of blacking out pieces of text in books is a statement and an utterance by publishers, a kind of form of struggle against censorship:

“This is a direct message to the reader: in this place, censorship tried to shut us up. If you are interested in what it tried to shut us up about, go and read these exact lines. Yes, on this very page, on this very line.

I believe this is precisely a form of fighting censorship. Those publishing houses that bow down before Putin’s censorship simply cut things out honestly in chunks: books come out without the slightest mention that they ever contained anything of the sort.”

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