In Russia, censorship is mass-deleting war and LGBTQ themes from books – intelligence
Kyiv • UNN
Russian publishing houses are mass-removing mentions of war, emigration, and LGBT+ from books. AI is already being used to search for undesirable content in texts.
Since the beginning of the full-scale war against Ukraine, censorship in the Russian book industry has reached unprecedented proportions. Publishing houses are massively removing mentions of the war, LGBTQ+, emigration, and other "undesirable" topics from texts, and some books are being published with fragments already crossed out. This was reported by the Foreign Intelligence Service, according to UNN.
Censorship in the Russian book industry following the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine has become systemic and unprecedented, transforming not only the market but the very nature of the text as a cultural product. While previously in Russia state intervention was limited to selective bans or pressure on individual authors, it is now a large-scale control infrastructure covering the entire publishing cycle: from manuscript to bookstore shelf,
A key feature of the new reality is the emergence of the so-called blackout—the physical crossing out of text fragments. This has now become a visual symbol of censorship that is no longer hidden but openly demonstrated. As a result, the reader receives a fragmented work rather than a cohesive one.
The reason is a sharp tightening of legislative restrictions. Any mentions of the war, criticism of Russian aggression, LGBTQ+ topics, emigration, decolonial discourse, and descriptions related to drugs or suicide have fallen under bans or strict moderation in Russia. Consequently, thousands of books are being checked, labeled, or withdrawn from sale. Censorship is applied regardless of when the work was written; even classics of world literature are subjected to "cleansing" through new translations or reprints.
Some Russian publishing houses have even resorted to using artificial intelligence to detect "undesirable" content. Algorithms analyze texts for risks, often mistakenly identifying common words or contexts as violations. This leads to absurd situations where ordinary scenes or even individual words can be banned. At the same time, the final decision rests with editors and lawyers, who are forced to operate under high-risk conditions—ranging from fines to criminal prosecution.
"Blackout" as a poetic device has historically been used in art as a form of protest or reinterpretation of text. However, in modern Russia, it has taken on the opposite meaning: instead of exposing hidden meaning, it serves as a tool for concealing it. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has failed to account for the fact that in the digital age, a reader can easily find the original text. Instead, a different effect is created—the normalization of absence. Black lines are becoming commonplace and are perceived as part of the "rules of the game."
Ultimately, Kremlin censorship ensures that the book ceases to be a source of knowledge and turns into an object of ideological processing, where even the absence of text carries political significance.