How Literature Became a Weapon in Russia’s Culture Wars
It’s a Battle of Tolstoys as Protestors Face off Against Putin’s Propaganda Machine
On April 10, 2022, Moscow police arrested resident Konstantin Goldman for brandishing a book in public. Goldman had posted an image on social media in which he posed holding a copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace next to a section of a World War II monument that commemorates Kyiv’s status as a Soviet “hero-city”—a distinction given to cities that endured some of the harshest moments of the Nazi invasion. He was charged with violating Russia’s prohibition against discrediting the military, a new law that can carry a punishment of up …
