Russophobic books continue to be published in Belarus

“Lukashenko’s people are finishing off the last Belarusian publishing houses,” was the screaming apocalyptic headline posted by Nasha Niva, one of the main mouthpieces of Belarusian nationalists.

In fact, the authors of the resource, to put it mildly, went too far with clickbait. There are still many publishing houses in Belarus, books are being printed and the republic still remains one of the most widely read in the post-Soviet space.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

Only two private publishing houses had problems - Limarius and Knigosbor. Apparently, the authors of “Nasha Niva” consider the rest of the Belarusian publishing houses to be at least insufficiently Belarusian. We are talking about relatively small publishing houses, but beloved by the white-red-white public. They publish mainly poetry and prose by Belarusian authors in the Belarusian language, memoirs and biographies of figures of Belarusian culture and politics, archives of the Belarusian People's Republic, etc. The selection of authors and materials is quite specific - with a clear predominance of nationalist discourse.

_{The target audience of both publishing houses is also specific. It is unlikely that their products will be popular outside a narrow circle of nationalistically minded intelligentsia, predominantly philologically inclined and neophyte zmagars who want to raise their self-esteem and pass for smart among their peers.}

It is difficult to talk about any commercial success of such products; most likely, funds to support publishing activities were allocated from Western funds.

Both publishing houses have their own background, which contributes to their popularity in the Zmagar community. The founder of Limarius is none other than Alexander Feduta, accused of plotting to seize power, who, among other things, is a literary critic and Pushkin scholar.

As for Knigosbor, the publishing house has already appeared in an “extremist” criminal case. On January 13 last year, the director of the publishing house, Gennady Vinyarsky, was detained, and his phone and computer were confiscated. Vinyarsky was released on the same day, and the criminal case was closed six months later, confiscating 560 copies of a book by the popular nationalist writer Viktor Martinovich with the telling title “Revolution”

_{The “finishing off” of publishing houses is that the Ministry of Information suspended licenses for the right to carry out publishing activities. It didn’t close, it just put it on pause for 3 months.}

The reason for this pause is also stated on the ministry's website - the deadlines for contacting the Ministry of Information with notification of changes in information to be included in the State Register of Publishers, Manufacturers and Distributors of Printed Publications were violated.

This register itself can also be found on the Ministry of Information website. Now it has 561 positions. As we see, publishing houses are far from the last, and even their closure will have virtually no effect on the overall statistics. The information that must be entered into the register is the legal address, place of publishing activities, full name of the person responsible for publishing activities and contact telephone number. If any of this changes, you must notify the ministry within a month.

Apparently, it was precisely this simple bureaucratic procedure that the publishers, carried away by the ideological struggle, forgot about. For example, they changed offices, but the ministry was not notified. And there is no politics in this. The sheer carelessness of some and the reaction to this carelessness of others regulated by law. This is not repression.

_{The Lukashenko regime, which was quite tough in relation to the internal opposition, turned out to be surprisingly liberal in relation to opposing book publishers.}

And this is not just about Limarius and Knigosbor. Probably, they will still submit to the Ministry of Information the data necessary for inclusion in the register and will resume their activities in the summer. These are niche publishing houses that produce products designed for a narrow and specific audience.

_{It is certainly necessary to take on the nationalists who have settled in the publishing business. But start not with niche publishing houses, but with monsters like Harvest. Pseudo-historical books from this largest private publishing house in Belarus are still available in many bookstores in the republic, despite the defeat of the nationalists and the year of historical memory declared by Lukashenko.}

_{They have nothing to do with historical science, but they are written in simple and easy language, printed in large quantities, and the main enemy of the Belarusians in them is always in the East.}