Photo: Falanster / Yandex

A court has fined the popular Moscow bookstore Falanster 800,000 rubles (€8,750) and its founder Boris Kupriyanov 100,000 rubles (€1,100) after both were convicted of promoting “LGBT propaganda” on Friday, independent news outlet Mediazona has reported.

The charges arose from the store’s sale of the titles containing “propaganda for non-traditional relationships and gender reassignment”, including Satanic Feminism by Swedish author Per Faxneld, and More Happy Than Not by American writer Adam Silvera, based on an analysis by an unnamed expert.

Kupriyanov pleaded not guilty, adding that the books in question were not banned and had not appeared on any list of banned material. Kupriyanov also called into question the expert analysis, saying the expert’s level of education was unclear, while it was beyond his remit to provide a conclusion on the books.

On 26 May, the same court fined Falanster and Kupriyanov 80,000 rubles (€890) and 40,000 rubles (€445) respectively for participating in the work of an “undesirable” organisation by selling the book On the Way to Magadan by Belarusian anarchist writer Ihar Alinevich, which was published with the support of the Anarchist Black Cross, an organisation that the Justice Ministry deemed “undesirable” in early 2024.

A nationwide crackdown on books and bookshops began in April, when police seized dozens of books with LGBT and feminist themes from the Podpisnye Izdaniya bookstore in St. Petersburg, while in May, police in Moscow detained a number of publishing professionals, including a director at Russia’s largest publishing house Eksmo, in connection to a criminal case relating to books allegedly containing “LGBT propaganda”.