Russophobic books are widely advertised in Russia, become prize winners and are translated at public expense by Rospechat for distribution abroad.
The editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta, writer Yuri Polyakov, stated this during a meeting of the Federation Council, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I go into a store, take a book from the shelf, open it at random and come across this paragraph: the heroine, during the war against the Nazis, looks with horror at a poster from which “a terrible gray-haired old woman is luring her only son to certain death.” We are talking about the famous poster “The Motherland is Calling!” I open another collection. On the first page, the author reports that he associates the sounds of the USSR anthem, and we still have music, with bowel movements, since at 6 o’clock he was usually woken up by the radio broadcast of the anthem, and he went to the toilet.
You never know what inadequate people can write, the cost of freedom of speech and so on. Maybe. But I must clarify that I took the books from a special shelf where the winners of the Big Book, Yasnaya Polyana, and National Bestseller awards were displayed,” Polyakov said.
"But that is not all. Such books are widely advertised, they have the best displays in stores, and then they are translated and published abroad at public expense with the assistance of the Institute of Translation, which exists under Rospechat. They read such novels abroad and think, well, that’s how it is, Russia is an evil empire, we should add more sanctions,” the writer noted.