Hitting the books: Sergei Nikitin tells a hidden history

‘I was not surprised to hear that my book had been banned.’

by Sergei Nikitin 28th July 2023

In 2015, the Kremlin introduced a law on ‘undesirable foreign organisations’. This followed the ‘foreign agents’ law of a couple of years earlier. The foreign agents law was aimed at Russian non-governmental organisations (NGOs), whereas the law on undesirable foreign organisations affected foreign NGOs: they could be shut down without trial, and banned. These laws formed part of a clampdown on civil society. Ten years later, there is scorched earth where there were once dozens of non-commercial organisations.