Culture
Russian-Language Publishing Abroad: Activism, a Hobby or Something Else?
January 30, 2025
- Felix SandalovCEO of StraightForward Foundation
Publisher Felix Sandalov discusses an important Russian cultural phenomenon of the 2020s, the so-called “new tamizdat” – the publication of banned books and writers by emigrant publishers outside of Russia.
The original text was published in Republic. A shortened version is being republished here with the author’s permission.
After the war began, the Russian authorities seriously took up literature, which previously, unlike cinema and especially the media, had been much less censored. Now, more than 50 writers have been designated “foreign agents,” with some even labeled “extremists” and “terrorists.” They have been put on wanted lists and sentenced in absentia to prison. There are more and more forbidden topics, issues and even words in book publishing. But literature is fighting back.
Publishing projects as cultural resistance
Over the three years of the war, about 20 Russian-language bookstores, along with a similar number of publishing houses, have been opened outside of Russia; two dedicated fairs are already planned for 2025 in Prague and Berlin; and emigrant literary prizes have appeared.
The main reasons for the book boom abroad are repression by the Russian authorities, creeping (self-)censorship in publishing houses in Russia, a demand among recent emigrants for frank conversations about what is going on, the breakdown of relations between Western publishers and their Russian partners due to sanctions, and the need to find new financing models amid the widespread crisis in journalism.
Many of the new publishing projects can be described as cultural resistance: they publish antiwar books, queer literature and works by writers banned in Russia.
They differ from the previous generation of emigrant publishing houses in their lesser interest in the Soviet period and greater alignment with the tastes of their readers.
After the war began, the Russian authorities seriously took up literature, which previously, unlike cinema and especially the media, had been much less censored. Now, more than 50 writers have been designated “foreign agents,” with some even labeled “extremists” and “terrorists.” They have been put on wanted lists and sentenced in absentia to prison. There are more and more forbidden topics, issues and even words in book publishing. But literature is fighting back.
Publishing projects as cultural resistance
Over the three years of the war, about 20 Russian-language bookstores, along with a similar number of publishing houses, have been opened outside of Russia; two dedicated fairs are already planned for 2025 in Prague and Berlin; and emigrant literary prizes have appeared.
The main reasons for the book boom abroad are repression by the Russian authorities, creeping (self-)censorship in publishing houses in Russia, a demand among recent emigrants for frank conversations about what is going on, the breakdown of relations between Western publishers and their Russian partners due to sanctions, and the need to find new financing models amid the widespread crisis in journalism.
Many of the new publishing projects can be described as cultural resistance: they publish antiwar books, queer literature and works by writers banned in Russia.
They differ from the previous generation of emigrant publishing houses in their lesser interest in the Soviet period and greater alignment with the tastes of their readers.
“These new publishing houses are run by people who helped build the modern book market in Russia and look to Western topics, visual language and marketing strategies.”
On October 22, 2024, Alexei Navalny's book Patriot was published simultaneously in 26 languages, including Russian. It is not available in print in Russia, only as an e-book. Source: The Moscow Times
Among books published in Russian outside of Russia, there are already some bestsellers. For example, My Beloved Country by journalist Elena Kostyuchenko, according to its publishers, was purchased by about 10,000 people. Even more bought the posthumously published autobiography of Alexei Navalny. It was published in late October 2024 by Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) under the specially created, symbolically named imprint One Book Publishing.
Boris Akunin, designated by the Kremlin as an “extremist” and “terrorist,” founded the “free publishing house” BAbook; banned Vladimir Sorokin and wanted Dmitri Glukhovsky put out their books through friendly independent publishers in Europe.
Of course, a few giants or one-off hits do not make a market; a so-called “long tail” is needed, with hundreds of titles sold in smaller print runs to support offline bookstores, literary agents and publishing houses. This “tail” is growing before our eyes: on your author’s estimates, at least 150 books (including official electronic releases) about the war and human rights violations were published, printed and distributed outside of Russia in 2024.
Boris Akunin, designated by the Kremlin as an “extremist” and “terrorist,” founded the “free publishing house” BAbook; banned Vladimir Sorokin and wanted Dmitri Glukhovsky put out their books through friendly independent publishers in Europe.
Of course, a few giants or one-off hits do not make a market; a so-called “long tail” is needed, with hundreds of titles sold in smaller print runs to support offline bookstores, literary agents and publishing houses. This “tail” is growing before our eyes: on your author’s estimates, at least 150 books (including official electronic releases) about the war and human rights violations were published, printed and distributed outside of Russia in 2024.
The first edition of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, published by YMCA-Press in 1973 in France. Source: Wiki Commons
New ‘tamizdat’? Not quite
Naturally, parallels with “tamizdat” come to mind.
At that time, in the absence of independent publishers (after the New Economic Policy was ended in 1920s, only state publishing houses were allowed in the USSR), authors whose works failed to pass official muster secretly sent their manuscripts abroad. It was thanks to tamizdat that Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, Akhmatova’s Requiem, Ginzburg’s Steep Route and many other books that are now studied even in Russian schools were published.
Today’s emigrant publishing – by publishers such as Babel, Freedom Letters, Meduza, Vidim Books, 24, Fresh Verlag and about a dozen other projects – differs greatly from tamizdat practices.
For example, most of the writers publishing with these houses are located outside of Russia, so,unlike Soviet-era tamizdat, their texts rarely need to be smuggled across state borders.
Naturally, parallels with “tamizdat” come to mind.
At that time, in the absence of independent publishers (after the New Economic Policy was ended in 1920s, only state publishing houses were allowed in the USSR), authors whose works failed to pass official muster secretly sent their manuscripts abroad. It was thanks to tamizdat that Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, Akhmatova’s Requiem, Ginzburg’s Steep Route and many other books that are now studied even in Russian schools were published.
Today’s emigrant publishing – by publishers such as Babel, Freedom Letters, Meduza, Vidim Books, 24, Fresh Verlag and about a dozen other projects – differs greatly from tamizdat practices.
For example, most of the writers publishing with these houses are located outside of Russia, so,unlike Soviet-era tamizdat, their texts rarely need to be smuggled across state borders.
“There are also no examples of writers being forced to ‘live within a lie’: to avoid repression, Soviet writers whose books were published abroad had to declare that this happened without their knowledge.”
Finally, the gap between Russian-language book publishing in Russia and abroad is also smaller: writers go back and forth, while everyone who prints books in Riga or Astana looks for how to deliver them to Russia.
Thus, tamizdat in the traditional sense is not quite suitable to describe the new wave of Russian-language publishing houses abroad. I propose the term “new emigrant publishing” (NEP).
Models for new emigrant publishers
NEP models vary. Below are just a few examples.
Freedom Letters specializes in low-cost production. Initially, electronic versions of books are published, with print versions done on an on-demand basis and in individual mini-runs, if possible. Volunteers do the editing and layout, while AI is used to make covers, allowing for rapid scaling. In 2024, Freedom Letters put out about 40 books.
Meduza: while the first incarnation of the book project of the most popular Russian-language independent news outlet merely repackaged content from its site, Meduza is now a full-fledged publishing house with large print runs by NEP standards (from 2,000-3,000 copies to start), acquired translation rights, and fiction and children’s literature.
Babel started publishing out of a bookstore in Israel in 2019. This “bookstore publisher” model can be found all over the world, but it gained particular popularity in Russia in the 2010s.
The 24 project is a network of micropublishers set up by Andrei Kurilkin, of the Russian publisher Novoye Izdatel'stvo, to publish works by contemporary Russian writers and poets in Sweden, Germany, Armenia, Israel and other countries. The runs are small, lowering the entry barriers and risks for partners. That said, multiplying the number of partners by the 200-500 copies produced by each of them translates into a healthy run, evenly distributed among the places with the highest likely demand.
Here it is worth mentioning the StraightForward project, where your author is directly involved: we support nonfiction writers whose books cannot be published in Russia because of their content or political persecution of their authors, or both. We hold open calls, accepting submissions for books about modern Russia, selecting the best ones and, to make sure they are read in as many languages as possible, editing and preparing manuscripts, helping authors with fact-checking, selling rights and negotiating with publishers.
NEP is hardly a full-fledged market at this point. Many publishing projects are some where between activism and hobby, yet there is room to grow.
Taboo topics
At a December meeting with the Russian Book Union, Vladimir Putin’s advisor Elena Yampolskaya expressed dissatisfaction with the continued “freedom” for book publishing: “I never cease to be surprised that a film in Russia needs to receive a distribution certificate, but a book is simply published and goes to stores.” This statement sounds like a harbinger of new restrictions on literature.
Still, unlike Soviet times there is still no preventive censorship in Russia.
Thus, tamizdat in the traditional sense is not quite suitable to describe the new wave of Russian-language publishing houses abroad. I propose the term “new emigrant publishing” (NEP).
Models for new emigrant publishers
NEP models vary. Below are just a few examples.
Freedom Letters specializes in low-cost production. Initially, electronic versions of books are published, with print versions done on an on-demand basis and in individual mini-runs, if possible. Volunteers do the editing and layout, while AI is used to make covers, allowing for rapid scaling. In 2024, Freedom Letters put out about 40 books.
Meduza: while the first incarnation of the book project of the most popular Russian-language independent news outlet merely repackaged content from its site, Meduza is now a full-fledged publishing house with large print runs by NEP standards (from 2,000-3,000 copies to start), acquired translation rights, and fiction and children’s literature.
Babel started publishing out of a bookstore in Israel in 2019. This “bookstore publisher” model can be found all over the world, but it gained particular popularity in Russia in the 2010s.
The 24 project is a network of micropublishers set up by Andrei Kurilkin, of the Russian publisher Novoye Izdatel'stvo, to publish works by contemporary Russian writers and poets in Sweden, Germany, Armenia, Israel and other countries. The runs are small, lowering the entry barriers and risks for partners. That said, multiplying the number of partners by the 200-500 copies produced by each of them translates into a healthy run, evenly distributed among the places with the highest likely demand.
Here it is worth mentioning the StraightForward project, where your author is directly involved: we support nonfiction writers whose books cannot be published in Russia because of their content or political persecution of their authors, or both. We hold open calls, accepting submissions for books about modern Russia, selecting the best ones and, to make sure they are read in as many languages as possible, editing and preparing manuscripts, helping authors with fact-checking, selling rights and negotiating with publishers.
NEP is hardly a full-fledged market at this point. Many publishing projects are some where between activism and hobby, yet there is room to grow.
Taboo topics
At a December meeting with the Russian Book Union, Vladimir Putin’s advisor Elena Yampolskaya expressed dissatisfaction with the continued “freedom” for book publishing: “I never cease to be surprised that a film in Russia needs to receive a distribution certificate, but a book is simply published and goes to stores.” This statement sounds like a harbinger of new restrictions on literature.
Still, unlike Soviet times there is still no preventive censorship in Russia.
“To publish a book in today’s Russia – for the time being? – no prior permission from any committee is required, as was the case in the Russian Empire and the USSR.”
The largest publishing group, Eksmo-AST, which controls most of the market – though it demonstrates loyalty to the Kremlin – is nevertheless guided by a capitalist logic, keen to monetize any political views.
In practice, there are both outright bans and “red lines”: when in doubt, publishers send the book to “experts” certified by the Ministry of Culture, who often reject anything that hints of a potential violation of the law or social taboos.
Here is an incomplete list of topics that are officially banned:
Self-censorship as a subversive political gesture
The book industry is a case in point of how prohibitions have gradually penetrated everyday life in Russia.
Promising projects are bought at the manuscript submission stage. However, three to four years may pass before books are published in translation, during which time significant political changes may have taken place in Russia. Today, many Russian publishing houses with large portfolios find it impossible to print or reprint new and some old books.
In practice, there are both outright bans and “red lines”: when in doubt, publishers send the book to “experts” certified by the Ministry of Culture, who often reject anything that hints of a potential violation of the law or social taboos.
Here is an incomplete list of topics that are officially banned:
- Criticism of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine: antiwar criticism from the left is completely taboo, while right-wing criticism is allowed within certain limits, however.
- LGBT characters: books are not to feature homosexual characters who are sympathetic or do not plainly suffer because of their sexual orientation.
- Decolonization stories that question the official version of the expansion of the Russian Empire as an exclusively nonviolent process.
- Comparison of the USSR and Nazi Germany.
- Denial of Crimea “belonging” to Russia.
- Books about human rights groups banned in Russia, such as Memorial.
- Stories that feature drug use, the effects of drugs or ways of limiting the harm of drug addiction.
Self-censorship as a subversive political gesture
The book industry is a case in point of how prohibitions have gradually penetrated everyday life in Russia.
Promising projects are bought at the manuscript submission stage. However, three to four years may pass before books are published in translation, during which time significant political changes may have taken place in Russia. Today, many Russian publishing houses with large portfolios find it impossible to print or reprint new and some old books.
“For example, Angela Merkel’s autobiography Freedom, which contains unflattering comments about Putin, will not be published in Russia, though the rights to publish it were purchased when the manuscript was still being finished.”
Adapting foreign literature to “Russian realities” has always been a difficult task for publishers seeking to work within the law, but in recent years the situation has tangibly worsened. Self-censorship is getting worse, and in some cases publishers, in an attempt to save face, demonstrate it openly.
Redacted pages in the published translation of Roberto Carnero's biography of Pier Paolo Pasolini. AST Publishers, 2024. Source: VK
For example, in April 2024, a biography of the transgressive Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini came out in Russia with big chunks of the chapter on his personal life redacted, along with an explanation that the content violated Russian law (Russia.Post wrote about it here). This attracted so much attention that the entire print run of the book sold out within a couple of weeks.
Inspired by this success, other publishers began using similar “techniques.” A recent example is Michael Cunningham’s new book. By making cuts visible, the publisher sends a signal to the reader to look for the information elsewhere or in the original.
Western publishers wary of doing business with Russian counterparties
The third reason for the growth of new Russian-language book projects outside of Russia is restrictions on publishing rights. These come from both writers themselves (for example, Stephen King and Neil Gaiman have refused to sign any translation and publishing deals with Russia) and their agents and publishers, who fear sanctions for doing business with Russian and Belarusian firms.
The Big Five international publishers are especially heavy-handed: Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster.
Inspired by this success, other publishers began using similar “techniques.” A recent example is Michael Cunningham’s new book. By making cuts visible, the publisher sends a signal to the reader to look for the information elsewhere or in the original.
Western publishers wary of doing business with Russian counterparties
The third reason for the growth of new Russian-language book projects outside of Russia is restrictions on publishing rights. These come from both writers themselves (for example, Stephen King and Neil Gaiman have refused to sign any translation and publishing deals with Russia) and their agents and publishers, who fear sanctions for doing business with Russian and Belarusian firms.
The Big Five international publishers are especially heavy-handed: Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster.
“Sometimes, Russian writers are contractually forbidden both to sell the rights to their manuscripts to publishers in Russia and to have the rights reverted to themselves.”
Michael Cunningham's novel Day. In April 2024, AST publishing house officially announced the suspension of sales of the book due to "LGBT propaganda." Source: Republic
In my experience, there was a case when an American author of a book about NATO’s expansion eastward, an extremely relevant and very uncomfortable topic for the Kremlin, broke off relations with us through his agent at the final stage of preparing the book, even though a contract had been signed after February 2022 and the translation and cover had already been finished.
Most Russian publishers have taken such breakdowns in business relations hard, seeing it as a betrayal after many years of cooperation, and are looking for ways to circumvent restrictions while simultaneously buying more rights to fiction and manhwa from Turkey and South Korea, respectively.
Searching for a ‘back door’
Two more structural reasons why Russian-language book projects abroad are poised to grow in the near future include demand for books among Russian emigrants and revenue diversification by both bookstores and opposition media outlets with large audiences, the latter having lost the ruble subscriptions and advertising contracts thatpreviously made up the lion's share of their revenue.
Russians who fled the country after mobilization or out of fear for their safety did so with few things. Most left their libraries back in Russia. Still, the current emigration is largely people brought up on the idea that there should be books at home, and this “cultural code” has made itself felt.
For NEP, all this looks more like an attempt to survive and build an ersatz book market, but many of those involved in these efforts today went through the creation of the Russian book market on the ruins of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
Documentary versus irony
Several trends have crystallized in the new emigrant literature. Firstly, the conversation about emigration as a reaction to the war (Nikolai Kononov’s The Night We Disappear, Grisha Prorokov’s Nothing but the Heart and Maria Stepanova’s Focus, among others) has spurred a search for a new language, a new identity and the shared experience of those who feel like an astronaut whose cable back to the station has snapped. This fits into the global trend in literature where, through autofiction, a person’s biography is presented as a chain of traumas.
Another trend is dystopias (Mouse by Ivan Filippov, Our Heart Beats for All by Konstantin Zarubin and Cadavers by Alexei Polyarinov) or books that pretend to be them (Tabia Thirty-Twoby Alexei Konakov). The third trend is investigative journalism and, more broadly, political nonfiction (Death is Our Business by Ilya Barabanov and Denis Korotkov and The Empire Must Die by Mikhail Zygar).
Most Russian publishers have taken such breakdowns in business relations hard, seeing it as a betrayal after many years of cooperation, and are looking for ways to circumvent restrictions while simultaneously buying more rights to fiction and manhwa from Turkey and South Korea, respectively.
Searching for a ‘back door’
Two more structural reasons why Russian-language book projects abroad are poised to grow in the near future include demand for books among Russian emigrants and revenue diversification by both bookstores and opposition media outlets with large audiences, the latter having lost the ruble subscriptions and advertising contracts thatpreviously made up the lion's share of their revenue.
Russians who fled the country after mobilization or out of fear for their safety did so with few things. Most left their libraries back in Russia. Still, the current emigration is largely people brought up on the idea that there should be books at home, and this “cultural code” has made itself felt.
For NEP, all this looks more like an attempt to survive and build an ersatz book market, but many of those involved in these efforts today went through the creation of the Russian book market on the ruins of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
Documentary versus irony
Several trends have crystallized in the new emigrant literature. Firstly, the conversation about emigration as a reaction to the war (Nikolai Kononov’s The Night We Disappear, Grisha Prorokov’s Nothing but the Heart and Maria Stepanova’s Focus, among others) has spurred a search for a new language, a new identity and the shared experience of those who feel like an astronaut whose cable back to the station has snapped. This fits into the global trend in literature where, through autofiction, a person’s biography is presented as a chain of traumas.
Another trend is dystopias (Mouse by Ivan Filippov, Our Heart Beats for All by Konstantin Zarubin and Cadavers by Alexei Polyarinov) or books that pretend to be them (Tabia Thirty-Twoby Alexei Konakov). The third trend is investigative journalism and, more broadly, political nonfiction (Death is Our Business by Ilya Barabanov and Denis Korotkov and The Empire Must Die by Mikhail Zygar).
“Nevertheless, even in novels published in Russia, authors sometimes do not backdown from political fantasy.”
I will not name names so as not to cause problems for these people, but the inquisitive reader can find books, lauded by critics over the last two years, where a chandelier in the Kremlin falls on a man who looks like Putin or where an uprising butchers Rosgvardiya officers – with each passing month it becomes harder and harder to commit such acts of literary sabotage, but they do exist.
What’s next?
Priorities for NEP include entering the US market, expanding catalogs of children’s literature, building up its own media and more closely cooperating with each other and international civil society institutions. Not to mention finding ways to communicate with Russia and Russians remaining there who can write on relevant issues.
Any geographical expertise has its expiration date. Because people live outside of Russia, many impressions are bound to become inaccurate, and scholars and international experts specializing in Russia already lack reliable sources about what is happening inside the country.
Cultural industries only have the power to transform society when they appeal to the broad masses, which requires truly popular and well-made intellectual products – something that activists, whose enthusiasm quickly gives way to burnout, rarely manage to make. My colleagues in Russia tell me that publishing houses are currently receiving an unprecedented number of manuscripts in their mailboxes. Classes at the many creative writing schools are full and literary agents swamped with work. Writers have taken the government’s signals about tightening censorship as a final warning: “publish now or forever hold your peace.”
More importantly, judging by last year, the Russian publishing community (both those who emigrated and their colleagues who remain in Russia) has generally made the choice at the very least not to glorify the ongoing bloodshed. Conservative writers and outright prowar cannibals remain marginal, while the top sellers are still self-help books, British detectives and dark fantasy.
What’s next?
Priorities for NEP include entering the US market, expanding catalogs of children’s literature, building up its own media and more closely cooperating with each other and international civil society institutions. Not to mention finding ways to communicate with Russia and Russians remaining there who can write on relevant issues.
Any geographical expertise has its expiration date. Because people live outside of Russia, many impressions are bound to become inaccurate, and scholars and international experts specializing in Russia already lack reliable sources about what is happening inside the country.
Cultural industries only have the power to transform society when they appeal to the broad masses, which requires truly popular and well-made intellectual products – something that activists, whose enthusiasm quickly gives way to burnout, rarely manage to make. My colleagues in Russia tell me that publishing houses are currently receiving an unprecedented number of manuscripts in their mailboxes. Classes at the many creative writing schools are full and literary agents swamped with work. Writers have taken the government’s signals about tightening censorship as a final warning: “publish now or forever hold your peace.”
More importantly, judging by last year, the Russian publishing community (both those who emigrated and their colleagues who remain in Russia) has generally made the choice at the very least not to glorify the ongoing bloodshed. Conservative writers and outright prowar cannibals remain marginal, while the top sellers are still self-help books, British detectives and dark fantasy.
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