Police seize dozens of titles with LGBT themes from St. Petersburg bookstore

Police in St. Petersburg have seized dozens of books with LGBT and feminist themes from the Podpisnye Izdaniya bookstore, local news source Mash on Moyka reported on Thursday.

According to the report, St. Petersburg’s Prosecutor’s Office ordered an inspection of the books on sale at the store following reports submitted by members of the public claiming that it stocked banned titles. The police seized dozens of books that bore what it described as “signs of LGBT ideology”.

Telegram channel Ostorozhno Media said that police officers questioned staff about books by the publisher Ad Marginem in particular. “Our books often appear on various insane lists,” Ad Marginem editor-in-chief Mikhail Kotomin told Ostorozhno Media. “It’s often weird choices such as One Way Street by Walter Benjamin or Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault.”

Staff at the bookstore told St. Petersburg media outlet Rotonda that they had been given a list of 48 books to remove from their shelves. The list included six books about feminism, including On Women by the late American writer Susan Sontag.

Podpisnye Izdaniya, which first opened its doors in 1926, is one of Russia’s best known independent bookshops, and frequently hosts book launches as well as signings and talks with writers and other cultural figures.