![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The book’s revival is not exactly flattering to the Russian regime. Originally published in 1946 under the German title, A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp, Frankl explores ways to find strength and resilience in the midst of the worst possible adversity and oppression. For about two months after the war began in February 2022, the bestseller on the Ozon online marketplace was the Russian translation of Man’s Search for Meaning, a book by the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. Cold War psychology is back as the Kremlin tells Russians they are fighting not Ukraine, but the “collective West.” The genre’s popularity also reflects a growing spy mania in President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where paranoia reigns about internal enemies and foreign agents.īut the most intriguing part of the Russian reading list is on the nonfiction side. This year has seen a surge in the popularity of books, movies, and TV shows about spies and espionage. Predictably, escapism was in high demand: Sales of romance, fantasy, science fiction, and detective books have grown especially strongly. As the economy foundered, laws against opposition tightened, and news of Russia’s military failures in Ukraine began to trickle in, people started buying noticeably fewer business and self-improvement tomes and more fiction. ![]() In 2022, it could be seen in the hands of people strolling on Moscow’s boulevards or lying next to vacationers sunbathing on Kaliningrad’s beaches.ġ984 is not the only book on Russians’ wartime reading list, which offers a window into how the book-reading public is processing its country’s increasingly militarist and totalitarian turn. Suddenly, George Orwell’s 1984, a dystopian novel about a totalitarian regime in a state of perpetual war written in the 1940s, became the most popular fiction book. As forbidden language was replaced with official euphemisms and the authorities launched an increasingly harsh crackdown on dissent, many Russians felt a distinct sense of déjà vu. When Russia launched the war that Russians must not call a war-the “special military operation,” in the Kremlin’s parlance-many Russians immediately recognized the Orwellian reality in which they now lived. ![]()
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