Some publishing houses in Russia are refusing to publish a collection of poems with the symbol Z on the cover, which the Russian army has been using since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. Propagandist Margarita Simonyan wrote about this in her Telegram channel.
“When we turned to publishing houses with a proposal to publish the very collection of modern front-line poetry “Poetry of the Russian Summer”, which we ourselves compiled, made illustrations and everything in general, they answered us: “Remove the letter Z from the cover. Not a single bookstore will will take." This quote. And this, of course, is a verdict. To all of us."
She also posted a screenshot of the correspondence.
At the same time, not all bookstores in Russia adhere to this position, since there are also reverse cases when they refused to sell books by writers opposed to the war. In July, the bookstores Moskva, Biblio-Globus and Molodaya Gvardiya refused to sell Viktor Shenderovich's books. According to the writer, the stores have withdrawn from sale his new book – a collection of prose "Among the Hyenas". In "Moscow" he was told that this was due to accusations of extremism. On December 30, 2021, the Ministry of Justice included Shenderovich in the register of "media acting as a foreign agent", after which he left Russia.
In June, the Young Guard store withdrew from sale all the books of the writer Boris Akunin, who opposed the war with Ukraine. The writer also created the Real Russia project to raise funds for Ukrainian refugees. He left Russia back in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea.