Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time,” Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” and Stephen King’s “It.” These are just a few victims of book purges happening all over Russia. Every authoritarian regime fears one weapon above all: a free mind. When a government starts banning books, it is not protecting its citizens. It is protecting itself. By deciding which books Russians may read, Putin is reviving a Soviet playbook that echoes the repression of Stalin’s era and the ideological controls of the Cold War.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The US needs to follow suit and adapt its Cold War playbook to the 21st century to take on a more active role in countering book censorship. The Russian Ministry of Justice maintains a constantly updated Federal List of Extremist Materials. Alexei Navalny’s “Patriot” is just one example of the 5,504 materials on the list, ranging from books, songs, memes, and more. The irony is striking. Vladimir Putin once praised Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the writer who exposed the brutality of Soviet repression and spent his life challenging censorship. In 2007, Putin, a former officer in the very KGB that once persecuted Solzhenitsyn, awarded him the State Prize for Lifetime Humanitarian Achievement. Yet today, Putin’s government is restricting books and silencing ideas it deems dangerous. Putin has passed numerous laws to suppress the free exchange of ideas. Following the passage of a 2022 law cracking down on LGBTQ+ “propaganda,” publishing houses and bookstores have removed books with LGBTQ+ themes from their shelves and faced numerous book raids. The Russian Book Union later set up an expert panel that determines if books comply with Putin’s new legislation. Last year, authorities arrested 11 employees of Russia’s largest publishing house, Eksmo, for allegedly violating that law. In January, Eksmo shuttered its subsidiary that specialized in LGBTQ+ fiction. Using AI, Eksmo has internally assessed approximately 20,000 books to check for compliance with new censorship laws.