Repression and war trigger sales of the book '1984' in Russia

George Orwell's 1984

isn't just about being spied on.

Russian President Vladimir Putin officially called his war against Ukraine a "Special Military Operation for the Defense of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics," and has repeatedly reiterated that "it was clear that confrontation was inevitable."

“The only question was when […] and better today than tomorrow,” the president said in December.

His crusade against Kiev, which he accuses of being the reincarnation of Nazism itself, and the repression of his own population have caused sales of books to skyrocket with which the Russians draw some tragic parallels, such as

.

"[For the State] the enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and from this it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible," Orwell emphasized in the third chapter of his famous dystopia, a warning against repression and Newspeak that has been on hand in any bookstore for three-quarters of a century.

More information

George Orwell's Big Brother was born in the Civil War

In a society confused by the bloodshed that takes place on the other side of the border, the fashionable books in 2022 have been those of self-help, of comparisons with the totalitarianisms of the last century and of the wounds left by a war.

The digital bookstore LitRes, the largest in the country, has revealed that the two most requested works were

and the self-help book

, by Olga Primachenko.

Both titles increased their sales respectively by 45% and 83% compared to the previous year, although Orwell's were already high because in 2021 there was another

after the arrest of the activist Alexéi Navalni and the subsequent persecution of protesters and the media.

Cover of the self-help book 'Tenderness with yourself: a book on how to appreciate and protect yourself', by Olga Primachenko, the best seller in Russia last year along with '1984'.

On the street dedicated to the poet Nikolai Nekrasov in Saint Petersburg there are several independent bookstores.

All Free (Vse Svobodny) is one of them.

On its window is written with adhesive tape: "Peace for the world", a Soviet motto that made a play on words in Russian ("Miru-Mir").

“Before, books on anthropology, philosophy and art sold more.

This year have clearly been those of politics, history and biographies of very specific periods of time, such as fascism in the 1930s and 1940s”, says Liobov Beliátskaya, co-owner of the store.

“Also many other books related in some way to the war.

Not only documentaries, but also literary works”, adds Beliátskaya, who cites among other anti-militarist writers two Germans exiled by National Socialist oppression, Heinrich Mann and Thomas Mann;

and one of the masters of Russian literature, Leo Tolstoy.

"Tolstoy's essays on the Russo-Japanese war of the early 20th century have sold a lot," says the bookseller.

The oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who at the beginning of the offensive advocated peace on his social networks, quoted a fragment from one of them,

: “War again.

Again suffering that no one needs, absolutely unnecessary.

Again the fraud, again the stupefaction and the universal brutalization of men ”, started that letter from the author of

.

View of the All Free (Vse Svobodny) bookstore, in Saint Petersburg.

“A new translation of

has come our way this year, although it's not a very good one, to be honest.

It has always sold very well, like all dystopias”, explains Beliátskaya.

Her opinion is shared by the bookseller from nearby Na Nekrasova, who specializes in old editions.

"Orwell sold the same in 2000 as in 2020, dystopia has always been very popular," she says, without wanting to reveal her name.

“I don't want to comment on politics”, she excuses herself, although she says that sales “fell 40% at the beginning of the military operation”.

"People were worried, the future was not clear, but they have recovered to levels of the previous year," she adds at her counter among old books from tsarist times and Soviet trains.

Varlaam is a twenty-something Russian who discovered

last year.

“I didn't think [what he was reading] was possible.

I felt two emotions: surprise and fear, ”he tells this newspaper.

The young man identifies with the

in the book, the lowest class controlled by the Thought Police, although he enjoys some freedom as long as he stays out of politics.

"I try to disconnect from all this and focus on myself," he admits.

For this reader, the parallelism between the newspeak of

and the euphemisms of the Kremlin, which labels its offensive as a "special operation" and dehumanizes the rival by speaking of "eliminated" and "suppressed" in its war reports, does not go unnoticed.

“They are trying to replace the meaning of the words, and they are successful because people are not specially trained,” says Varlaam.

The young man is now reading the saga

, by Andrzej Sapkowski, and he cannot stop thinking of Ukraine in those passages where the Polish writer crudely recounts the horrors and evil that the wars of his kings leave behind.

If

is the place where the Russians look for answers to authoritarianism, the self-help book

is the escape of thousands more who have wanted to disconnect from reality.

“I think it is very relevant in these times;

You have to take care of yourself when the world around you collapses ”, a young woman who has read that work, Yevguenia, tells EL PAÍS.

“It is clear that you, as an individual, cannot reverse international politics or reason with a dictator, but you can improve your own life”, believes this jeweler by profession.

Find answers in

Story of a German

Beyond works of fiction, Russians have also been drawn to the personal reflections of those who lived through the rise of totalitarianism almost a century ago.

“There are books that were not paid enough attention before and now they have become best sellers.

For example, The

, by Sebastian Haffner”, underlines the co-owner of Todos Libres.

“People are drawn to historical parallels.

If the same political processes can occur, can we influence them?

We can not?

If history repeats itself in some way, answers are sought in the past”, Beliátskaya asserts.

The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), in a portrait of 1896.

“The story I am about to tell here is the story of a peculiar duel.

A duel between two unequal rivals: an incredibly powerful and implacable State and an unknown and small citizen”, begins Haffner's prologue.

That journalist managed to flee to the United Kingdom at the last moment.

His book, written in 1939, was not published until 2000, a year after his death.

This book has survived the strict censorship of the authorities, but others have not managed to escape that fate.

, by Mark Manson, has been mutilated on one of its pages.

A paragraph and a half that compared Nazi Germany with the USSR is blacked out because, as the footnote explains, "this part has been removed in accordance with the law on the perpetuation of the victory of the Soviet people in the great Patriotic war."

Censorship reaches more areas.

"The law against LGTBIQ propaganda has had a

[when an act of censorship produces the opposite effect]," says Beliátskaya, who highlights the increase in her sales in other stores: "What they prohibit you arouses more interest " .

In the center, a book by Mijaíl Zygar rated for people over 18 years of age, in the Todos Libres bookstore.

Above right, 'Story of a German', by Sebastian Haffner.

The Order of Words bookstore (Poriádok Slov) has a sign prohibiting entry to those under 18 years of age on its door.

Inside there is no hint of adult content, nothing that can't be found in any public library.

However, in the corner of one of its shelves the supposed dangerous content suddenly appears.

These are several books on recent Russia by the journalist Mikhail Zygar, declared a "foreign agent" last year.

A new law not only forces blacklisted authors to identify themselves as such on all social media, but from now on they are also required to display a huge “+18″ sign on the covers of all their books.

"They sell very well," they say in one of the bookstores where they still dare to distribute works by "foreign agents."

Hardly a book by these outlawed authors can be found in the shops of the captivating Nevsky Prospect.

There, however, calendars with Soviet motifs and other books about Putin, Stalin and the war in Ukraine from an ultra-patriotic point of view occupy a prominent place.

, titles one of them with the “Z” that identifies the army in its offensive.

is called another with another huge “Z” on the cover.

And nearby, on another shelf, a compilation of texts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.

is its title, a direct quote from an excerpt from

where the writer defended that part of Ukraine is prone to Russia, but that country should decide its fate alone without any interference from Moscow.

Despite the fact that he supported Putin before his death, dark clouds are also hanging over the figure of Solzhenitsyn in present-day Russia: this week a State Duma deputy asked to withdraw

from schools because, in his opinion, "it has not resisted the passage of time and does not correspond to reality.

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