Condemnation of writers and artists to prison terms, hinders the dissemination of films, shell books, restricted access to the Internet: the Kremlin inexorably accentuates its control over the free movement of ideas, without however formally restoring censorship as it existed at the time of the USSR, which the current Constitution prohibits.
Wednesday, July 23, the deputies of Duma, the lower room of Parliament, voted a law which will oblige, from January 2026, the film distributors to obtain from the Ministry of Culture a label according to which the works they are preparing to disseminate are in accordance with “Russian traditional spiritual and moral values”. Another law, passed the day before, provides fines for Internet users looking for “Extremist contents” on the net.
Inapplicable as it is because it criminalizes a difficult intention to prove, this law allows you at least to maintain a climate of fear and self -censorship. “This legal vagueness suits the authorities. Each Russian has a sword of damocles above the head. Fear pushes people to be silent. The Kremlin practices arbitrariness as much as it can, the laws he promulgates are insidious, which encourages everyone to think that he could be concerned ”explains sociologist Alexis Berelowitch.
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