Letter From the Editors

When summoned to appear before the House Unamerican Activities Committee in May 1952, playwright Lillian Hellman penned a scathing letter in which she refused to name names. “Icannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions,” she wrote. Just like ordinary fashion, political fashions seem to also be cyclical – the environment in today’s Russian politics is certainly becoming reminiscent of McCarthyism, but with a Kafka-esque twist.

Case in point: the “publishers’ case,” which made headlines this week after the Investigative Committee conducted raids at the offices of Russia’s biggest publishing house, Eksmo, and placed several employees under house arrest. The official reason was the dissemination of “extremist” literature – meaning anything pertaining to the recently banned (albeit nonexistent) LGBT movement – by Popcorn Books and Individuum, which are imprints of Eksmo. The reason for the extra jitters is that Eksmo is not some small independent publishing house. As Konstantin Shavlovsky writes in Republic, “Eksmo-AST is approximately the same as Yandex in the IT market.” So if a powerhouse that publishes everything from Zakhar Prilepin to “books glamorizing Stalin” is vulnerable to state repressions, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Shavlovsky allows that the entire incident is meant to conceal ongoing power struggles within the elite. For example, “Orthodox” oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev may have an axe to grind with Eksmo owner Oleg Novikov. Rumor has it that Malofeyev was outraged by a book titled “Crypto. How Cypherpunks, Programmers and Rogues Bound Russia With Blockchain,” which implicates him in cryptocurrency manipulation.

But methods like those deployed by Hellmann – open letters and calls for solidarity – would only backfire in Russia-2025, writes Shavlovsky. Does this mean that the siloviki have won? In today’s Russia, “true solidarity is not expressed in the form of open letters, but in the purchase of books and at lectures, seminars, book fairs and, in general, at any event related to reading and knowledge.” In other words, culture has gone underground – and by doing so, it’s “creating tiny centers of resistance to complete ignorance and demagoguery.”

This brings up the curious case of Noviye Lyudi, a party thought up as a Kremlin project to attract urban voters while still keeping them within the carefully curated field of establishment politics. “The paradox at the heart of the party is that the Kremlin’s domestic policy team created Noviye Lyudi to engage Russia’s urban electorate. However, the invasion of Ukraine has made it nearly impossible to appeal to liberal voters while adhering to mainstream messaging,” writes Meduza. But while the party itself carefully toes the line, some of its members are committing brazen acts like criticizing the government’s recent proposal to financially incentivize schoolgirls to carry a pregnancy to term. Donned in a traditional Russian kokoshnik, assemblywoman Ksenia Goryachova lashed out at the idea, saying that “kids having kids” is a tragedy. Noviye Lyudi flirted with progressive ideas with calls to end YouTube and Instagram bans, and could even be considered liberal, “were it not for its proposals to restrict entry for migrant workers,” or “impose fees on returning Western companies.”

Still, compared to lumbering dinosaurs like the RFCP or the “Liberal Democratic” party, Noviye Lyudi is a breath of fresh air. The former two parties, along with A Just Russia – for Truth, are having a hard time wooing back the female voter, writes Nezavisimaya gazeta. For instance, JRFT proudly claimed that “most of its members (59%) are women.” However, when it comes to governing bodies, the picture is less rosy: Women make up only a fraction of leadership positions. As for the Communists, all they have going for them is “the party’s historical role in the fight for women’s rights.” As Konstantin Kalachov puts it, Russian women have become disillusioned with leftist parties because they’ve failed to uphold the interests of, well, women. The proposals coming from these holdover parties are clearly out of fashion, and they’re shopping for a better option.