The Russian authorities have opened criminal proceedings against the writer Boris Akunin, who is also known to Czech readers thanks to his historical detective stories about the tsarist official Erast Fandorin. According to local media, he will be prosecuted for spreading alleged lies about the army, according to the state agency TASS, he is even suspected of “justifying terrorism”.
Sixty-seven-year-old Akunin, whose real name is Grigory Chchartishvili, lives abroad and has previously condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
According to Interfax, the authorities will soon place him on the wanted list. Already on Monday, he was included in the list of “terrorists and extremists” managed by the Russian financial supervision agency Rosfinmonitoring. The addition entails the blocking of the Russian bank accounts of these people.
The writer has not yet responded to the allegations. Russian authorities and courts label as “false” any information that contradicts the official regime’s interpretation of the war against Ukraine. Its critics face accusations of discrediting the armed forces or spreading deliberate lies, for which, according to the laws adopted after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, they can end up behind bars for up to 15 years.
According to the media, not only Boris Akunin’s books, but also 55-year-old Dmitri Bykov’s, another exiled author criticizing the war, have stopped being sold in Russia. Both of them used particularly harsh words in telephone conversations, which were “caught” by pro-Kremlin pranksters, i.e. pranksters pretending to be someone else in phone calls with well-known personalities, explains the Russian editorial staff of the BBC.
In an interview with pranksters known by the nicknames Vovan and Lexus, Bykov uttered a line that outraged supporters of the war and also appeared in the state agency TASS: “Of course, when they kill Russians, it bothers me. But I don’t complain, just as I don’t complain about Israel because Gaza.”
From the interview with Akunin, the state media took over the sentence that the writer would like to help Ukraine, as well as other Russians active in culture and rejecting “Putin’s dictatorship”.
The Russian publishing house AST later announced that it was stopping the distribution of books by both writers. According to the director of the company, Pavel Griškov, the reason is “the public statements of the writers, which had a great response in society”. The printing and distribution of the works are to be suspended until the statements of both writers are “legally evaluated”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov assured a year ago that in Russia “there is no general tendency” to ban works, confiscate books and erase from posters supporters of opinions other than those of President Vladimir Putin. “Each specific case needs to be assessed,” he said. Putin has previously said that Moscow is concerned about alleged foreign attempts to disrupt Russian culture, but that he will not follow suit.
Now, according to the Meduza server, the Chitai-gorod chain of bookstores has announced that it is stopping the sale of Akunin’s and Bykov’s books. Also in this case, the company refers to “recent statements by writers that have had a great response in the media”.
Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov publicly condemned the incursion of Russian troops into the neighboring country already last February.
The author of historical detective novels, Akunin was one of the main speakers at the turn of 2011 and 2012 at mass anti-government demonstrations, suppressed after Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin. Since 2014, he has lived in Britain, France and Spain. Bykov is mainly known as the author of biographical books about Boris Pasternak, Bulat Okudzhav, Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Mayakovsky.
In August of this year, a Moscow court sentenced another popular writer, Dmitry Gluchovsky, to eight years in prison in absentia for allegedly spreading lies about the army. The writer is also known to Czech and Slovak readers thanks to the novels Metro 2033 and Metro 2034. According to the indictment, Gluchovsky spread texts and videos on social networks with “artificially created” evidence of crimes committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine, the TASS agency wrote, reminding that the writer lives in exile.
Gluchovsky’s books, like the works of many other writers who protested against the war, are banned from being displayed in bookstores and taken out of circulation by libraries, concludes the server Meduza, which operates from Latvian exile.
Video: Banning Russian artists makes sense, says Putna
“Truth is what the tsar wants. What creates a good image of Russia,” professor and literary historian Martin C. Putna told DVTV last year shortly after the start of the Russian war. | Video: Daniela Písařovicová
