Authorities Target Historic Bookstore in St. Petersburg for Removal of LGBTQ+ Literature

Law enforcement officials in St. Petersburg conducted a raid on a century-old independent bookstore, instructing the removal of numerous books they assert contravene Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ regulations, as reported by the media on Thursday.

The bookstore, Podpisniye Izdaniya, was given a list containing 48 titles, including works by American author Susan Sontag and exiled feminist poet Daria Serenko, designated for removal.

Among the targeted books were six related to feminism, one by renowned dissident writer Vladimir Sorokin, along with two others written by journalists labeled as “foreign agents,” Sergei Parkhomenko and Valery Panyushkin, as noted by a staff member in an interview with the Telegram channel Rotonda.

The news outlet 78.ru showed uniformed police officers engaging with the bookstore employees and provided images of the store’s shelves marked with “feminism” and “gender studies.”

According to the St. Petersburg news site Fontanka, authorities showed particular interest in titles published by Ad Marginem, a publishing house that features works by Sorokin, Sontag, and other notable authors.

In late 2022, major Russian bookstores such as Chitay-Gorod, Labirint, and Respublika took the initiative to remove LGBTQ+ titles from their inventories as a form of self-censorship.

In December of that year, President Vladimir Putin ratified an extension of the 2013 “LGBT propaganda law,” which prohibits the representation of LGBTQ+ relationships and “lifestyles” in books and other media.

Since the introduction of this law, Russian journalists have circulated lists of hundreds of titles they allege have been banned under the expanded “LGBT propaganda” regulations, although Russian authorities deny maintaining a list of prohibited books.