The Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation has approved a new summer reading list for schoolchildren featuring propaganda books about the war against Ukraine. This comes amid the largest crisis in the Russian book market in the last six years, where print runs have fallen by 26 percent due to censorship and poverty. This was reported by the Foreign Intelligence Service, according to UNN.
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Russian authorities continue to tighten ideological control over education against the backdrop of a rapid decline in the book market. The Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation has officially approved an updated list of mandatory summer reading for schoolchildren, including a number of propaganda publications about the so-called "heroes of the SMO."
At the same time, the Kremlin is returning works of Soviet war literature about the "Young Guard" and World War II to school lists. Experts view these steps as a continuation of a large-scale campaign to militarize education and build youth loyalty to Kremlin policy,
Amid the active imposition of "correct" literature, the Russian book market is experiencing a deep crisis. In the first quarter of 2024, the total circulation of books and brochures in Russia fell to 57.3 million copies—26% less than in the same period last year. This is the worst figure in at least the last six years.
Participants of the "Russian Book Industry" conference cited inflation, tax increases, falling purchasing power of the population, demographic decline, and increased censorship as the causes of the crisis.
The drop in print runs indicates a decline in Russians' interest in reading. At the same time, the authorities are increasingly pushing independent and critical views out of the educational space, replacing them with politically biased publications. As a result, the book in Russia is turning not into a tool for developing critical thinking, but into a means of pro-Kremlin propaganda,