Authors

Discussion

The authoritarian consolidation following Vladimir Putin’s re-election to the presidency in 2012 has profoundly transformed Russia’s domestic publishing landscape. The state employed a rhetoric of "Russian traditional values" to justify a pseudo-conservative legislative turn, which, in effect, introduced censorship practices. Legislators’ arguments in support of censoring laws were significantly entrenched in the oft-repeated fear that the West meant to co-opt Russian youth: censorship was legitimized through the argument that young Russians were in dire need of protection from harmful Western influences that would estrange youth from traditional values.

Consequently, publishing houses specializing in youth literature had to tread a fine line between adhering to the new official standards of what was appropriate for young audiences and maintaining the authenticity of their practices as publishers of youth literature. The state’s exploitation of purported concern for young people’s moral wellbeing to justify censorship became all the more tangible in 2022, when the young adult book Leto v pionerskom galstuke (2021) was scapegoated by Russian legislators in order to ban all information regarding LGBTQIA+ identities.

This paper examines how Leto v pionerskom galstuke by Katerina Sil’vanova and Elena Malisova correlates with the broader program of its publishing house. Relating a close reading of the publication to an overview of its publisher’s activities allows for a further investigation as to why, from this publisher’s large catalogue of young adult literature, precisely this book was singled out by legislators. From here I examine how the novel coheres in young adult literature writing and publishing under the pressures of increasing authoritarianism in Russia. The paper aims to offer further insight in the precarious position of literature for young audiences in present-day Russia’s cultural and political field.