The screenshot from Slon.ru. Title : War with Waste Paper. “Kiev caput” and other books banned by Ukraine.
The article is prepared by our Russian-speaking reader, translated from Russian by Olga Seletskaia
Ukraine has banned the import of several dozen books devoted to the fact that the Ukraine is a failed state. Among the banned authors are: Lemonov, Narochnitskaya, Fedor Berezin (one of the Strelkov’s allies), and others. Ukrainian patriotic edition “Slon.ru” (for some reason it calls itself liberal and Russian) published excerpts from banned books entitled “War with Waste Paper” to show that books are bad and that Ukrainian “taras” (from famous Gogol’s novel “Taras Bulba”; after Maidan the word “taras” means Ukrainian nationalists – O.S.) did the right thing to ban them.
Why is this funny? In the early 2000s the Russian movement “Walking Together” campaigned against the writer Sorokin, quoting various lewdness of his books (which were full of it), to convince the public that this was not literature, but waste paper; and hence, it was necessary to prohibit Sorokin’s books. Needless to say, that the newly emerged then “Slon.ru” strongly defended Sorokin and freedom of speech. They called prohibition of literature “barbarism”, comparing it with the Nazis burning books, etc.
But the wheel of history has made the turnover – and pro-Ukrainian liberals of “Slon.ru” have become absolutely indistinguishable from those whom they fiercely fought with in the Sorokin case. “Slon.ru” became even worse, because Sorokin has never been banned in Russia. After all, there is no freedom of speech in the “totalitarian Russia”, as opposed to the “European Ukraine” which bans books and murders journalists for a position different from the official rhetoric of Kiev. One of the most famous cases is Oleg Buzina.
We congratulate the editors of “Slon.ru” on achieving the title “Mendacious Scum”! And we would like to remind that the essence of freedom of speech is that is an inalienable human right; and only liars ban books – be they good or bad. Because books are not afraid of the truth .
Of course, a true liberal can not justify the ban of books. At the heart of the liberalism is the idea of the priority of human rights and freedoms, as well as a free conscious choice, above all else. Therefore, for the liberal, Crimea, of course, is totally Russian, as its population is directly and unequivocally expressed their will; and any “right of the state of Ukraine”, “Budapest Memorandum 1993” , and other secondary to the essence of human rights ideas are absurd. So it is a big question who are these people – who under the guise of liberalism are promoting in Russia and Europe stale Ukrainian patriotism and russophobia funded by the US government.