How do Russians Read “1984”?

Officially banned in the Soviet Union until 1988—circulated only as samizdat long sentences in prison until the dawn of the age of glasnost And perestroika—George Orwell’s 1984 In the Russian Federation, TASS topped the fiction downloads list in mid-December. TASS, Russia’s state news agency Reported December 13 Orwell’s dystopia topped the 2022 ebook sales totals on LitRes. LitRes is a Russian online audio-ebook seller and platform. It was also the second most downloaded book in any category. Western media reported that the rumours that half of the Russian population opposed the continuation war in Ukraine were regularly circulated weekly in Western media. 1984Russia’s current popularity is due to widespread public dissatisfaction at the Putin regime, and a growing belief that it does indeed resemble Oceania. 1984.

This conclusion might be incorrect or even premature. One might point out the strong support Putin commands at home, and the willingness of the Russian people to endure the hardships a long-term war. 1984It is now a bestseller. LitRes and other online book sellers are not afraid to sell the book. Notable is also the fact that Russian editions of 1984 All works for sale have been edited and presented by authors officially approved by Ministry of Culture.

It is important to emphasize that the timing of sales spikes should be considered. 1984 Since mid-2022, the publication of a new issue of 1984 Darya Telovalnikova, the translator, leaves out any mention of parallels between Russia and Oceania. Instead, she argues that today’s. “liberal totalitarianism of the West” This closely matches Orwell’s nightmare vision. Tselovalnikova says it’s not Russia, but the corrupted. “liberal,” so-called democracies of the West that are truly totalitarian in 2022—that is, dominated by demagogues and vulgar populists who manipulate their Demos Russia is being targeted for its nefarious and geopolitical intentions. “Orwell could not have dreamt in his worst nightmares that the era of ‘liberal totalitarianism’ or ‘totalitarian liberalism’ would come in the West, and that people—separate, rather isolated individuals—would behave like a raging herd.”

It is the latest edition of 1984 that is selling on LitRes—and that has been aggressively promoted by the Russian media. Maria Zakharova was a key spokesperson in the Foreign Ministry and set the Kremlin guidelines for Tselovalnikova’s slant in a statement. 1984: “For many years we thought Orwell was describing totalitarianism,” she declared. This post-Gorbachev era, which was marked by self-disgusting and gullible acceptance that the West denigrated the USSR, represented a surrender of Western propaganda. This is a view of 1984 “is one of the global fakes,” She noted. “Orwell wrote about the end of liberalism. He wrote how liberalism would lead humanity into a dead end.” We can ignore the fact that many of the satirical referenced are in 1984 Zakharova stated that Orwell was a response to events and personalities (including Stalin the Big Brother) during the USSR of 1940s. “wasn’t writing about the Soviet Union, but about the society in which he lived.”

Zakharova’s line 1984 The Ministry of Culture endorses a stable of reliable mouthpieces that will assist him. “Russia’s actions in Ukraine are, in essence, anti-war,” Dmitry Kiselyov (the Kremlin TV Host) has stated. Sergey Lavrov has repeatedly denied that, he is the head of Foreign Ministry. Russia “invaded” UkraineDuckspeaking the official line of Ukraine that it is a “brotherlands” This must be brought back in the “Russian world”—a euphemism favored by Vladimir Putin to rationalize and defend Kremlin domination of its sphere of influence and expansionist campaigns.

Both of these explanations can be trusted. 1984The truth is in’s popularity. The sales boom was fueled by growing political disillusionment and political dissent against the current regime of Vladimir Putin. With readers seeing parallels between Putin’s oppressive regime and current Russian politics, it is not surprising that this popularity has been partially responsible. The government appears to be coopting the novel as part of a propaganda campaign. The book is used to attack Russia and portray Russia as a victim. This helps justify the regime’s actions over the media.

Another explanation that I find plausible (and possibly the most depressing) is: Have Vladimir Putin and his Russian establishment planned to create a form literary? glasnost is quite permissible—because it is quite harmless? The conjecture can’t be dismissed easily: “dangerous” Books during the Soviet era, such as 1984 are now available from the official state bookseller, promoted by the Ministry of Culture, reissued in new editions from leading state presses such as AST Publishers in Moscow, and taught in Russian universities because—unlike the case throughout the Soviet era—they apparently no longer pose a threat to a “totalitarian” regime, “liberal” Or it could be illegal.

This opinion has been eloquently advanced by Orwell’s Russian-language biographer, Masha Karp, a dissident émigré residing in London and the author of the forthcoming George Orwell Russia (Bloomsbury), to be published in mid-2023. Karp quotes a line from “Bloomsbury” in one section of her book. “The Prevention of Literature” (1946)—Orwell’s most famous defense of freedom of thought and expression—and gives it a fresh accent. Orwell wrote the essay:

The organized lying of totalitarian states does not have the same effect as military deception. It is something integral to totalitarianism, something that would still continue even if concentration camps and secret police forces had ceased to be necessary.

The “key words” Karp argues that these rules apply to Russia in 2023. “had ceased to be necessary.” Karp notes “concentration camps” And “secret police forces,” Even though they are in a different (and more insidious and less immediately visible) way, they are still with us. “What has really ceased to be necessary is the censorship of books.” You will notice that the print runs for most of these publications are very small. “dangerous books” She emphasizes her main point, even though the number of copies is usually less than 5,000 “You can’t imagine what wonderful books have been published in Russia in the last 20 years! It is only now, with this war, that they do not publish on the cover the names of the authors who left the country in protest against it, but before 24 February, everything… was published… [The Kremlin] realized that books were not so dangerous after all.”

Karp would, I believe, also accept our first two explanations. 1984Partially true statements are found in the bestsellerdom. She estimates that 20 percent of the Russian populace—numbering about thirty million citizens—quietly stands against Putin to varying degrees of opposition and would like in various ways to see Russia more “westernized.” (This does not equate to backing the West’s positions and/or participation in the Ukraine war, she notes, for which there is still far less—and little public and vocal—support). Her estimate further states that around 30% of Russians are strong Putin supporters, which includes “fascists, racists, and Empire-worshippers.” She concludes: “Half of the population can be turned this way and that way, depending on the media – whether it is state-controlled or free.”

Karp notes that the battle for Orwell’s ghost has been ongoing in Russia for many years. “Orwell’s name is a kind of shorthand among both Russians opposing Putin’s regime in general and the Ukraine war in particular…. Outside Russia, an incredible cult of Orwell exists abroad among Russian readers of foreign online Russian newspapers and radio broadcasts. He is mentioned every day on Facebook, Twitter, in blogs, and also in newspapers, and radio.” These outlets are not generally available to Russians. Even before the current war began, few media ever voiced criticism of the regime—and all of them (such as the radio station Echo Moskvy) were labelled “foreign agents” In 2021, it was banned. Russians can’t listen to Voice of America broadcasts in Russian online (except for those who subscribe to Telegram, an online service that allows monitoring and tracking of subscribers’ activities).

However, the sales figures for 1984 Attest to the fact that Orwell has attracted a lot of attention over the last decade. As early as 2015, various Russian sources—including the Russian Book Club, Russian Book Union, the Russian Publishers Association, And online bookstores such as ozon.ru and labirint.ru—were reporting that a sales upsurge of 1984 Work was underway. The RBC, for instance, announced in its Christmas report 2015 (December 23, 2015) that translations had been made. 1984 Orwell’s novel had been sold in 85,000 copies. “one of the ten top-selling books.” (1984 This was not the only grim futuristic scenario that Russia included on its 2015 list. 2035, a “a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction”>post-apocalyptic Dystopia Dmitry Glukhovsky set in the ruins of Moscow and—as in Orwell’s Airstrip One—in the aftermath of a Nuclear apocalypse.)

That is why 1984In 2015, the Crimea invasion triggered a rise in bestseller status for ‘. “annexation” in 2014—shades of Moscow’s land grab annexations of four more Ukrainian provinces in 2022—I regard it as probable that the same mix of factors accounted for the sales spike of 2015 as in 2022-23. The main difference between then-and-now is that the Orwell vogue news in Russia was reported only in Russia in 2015, and virtually ignored in the West. Second, 2022 was witness to this. 1984 Not just to reach the top ten, but to ascend to #1 in Russia. (Even before Darya Telovalnikova translated the bestseller edition and aggressively promoted by the Ministry of Culture 2022 1984 Russian publishers were very supportive of the book. One source reports that the print run for 2021 numbered 482,600 copies—that is, even before the upswing in sales during 2022 amid the Ukrainian war.)

1984 It was published in Soviet Union only in 1988, nearly four decades after its first publication in the West. It was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988, almost four decades after its first publication in the West. The only access to it was by a few Soviet Communist Party ideologists from Ministry of Culture. nomenklaturaIt was never read or discussed in Party circles. The novel had a long history of being banned And censored in the Soviet Union, whose official dissolution on another Russian Christmas 32 years ago—December 25, 1991—was widely celebrated in a spirit of naïve triumphalism as the birth of “the New World Order” and “the end of History” All over the West. No prominent Sovietologists in the West then envisioned that a little-known functionary in the Communist Party—an obscure KGB lieutenant colonel—would rise by the decade’s close to become a Russian strong man unequalled since Stalin in power and durability (two dozen years, and counting).

Or Masha Karp writes it in George Orwell and Russia:

Russia began a full-scale crime war in Europe in February 2022. It used nuclear blackmail and intimidation to stop any interference. A new era [of international instability] It has started and we don’t yet know where it will end. One thing is, however, clear—these disastrous developments have, unfortunately, been made possible by the stubborn refusal [in Orwell’s words] ‘to see the Russian regime for what it really is’.

Karp sends a personal note: “The West simply has not been interested in the ongoing ‘Orwellian’ events in Russia over the last two decades, such as the countless infringements on free speech and violations of human rights. It is this indifference which has given Putin his sense of impunity.”

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