The Kremlin is redefining what it means to be a writer in Russia.
Page B1From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 31 August 2026
Moscow cracks down on Russian literature the same week Washington pushes 'true' communism lessons.
As it ran on the front
OBITUARY: The Unedited Telling of Communism's History, born sometime after the archives opened, died this week, survived by footnotes, asterisks, and two governments that could not agree on anything except the need to supply the ending themselves.
It is survived by the Washington Examiner's call for young Americans to learn communism's 'true history,' a phrase that arrives, as such phrases do, without a syllabus attached, and preceded in death by whatever version of that history existed before someone decided it needed a modifier.…
…(cont) It is also survived, an ocean away, by the Kremlin, which this week came for Russian literature itself — not commentary on the literature, the literature — proving that the surest sign a history is inconvenient is the number of governments willing to edit it in the same news cycle, from opposite ends of a cable.
The deceased was, in life, complicated: full of purges it does not excuse and privations it does not deserve to have erased, a shit century by any honest accounting, and neither government waiting in these receipts intends to leave it that complicated. One wants a lesson plan. One wants a shorter shelf. Malarkey, both of them, dressed for different weather.
Born of archives, footnotes, and the stubborn, unglamorous work of historians who do not get a modifier in front of their job title. Preceded in death, repeatedly, by every previous decade's version of the official story. Survived by whichever textbook committee or literature ministry gets to the printing press first.
No cause of death is listed, because there rarely is one — only two governments, unrelated to each other, arriving independently at the same conclusion: that the story is safer curated than read.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you go find the primary source yourself, before somebody finishes editing it for you.
“Two governments, same week, both decide the story of communism needs a chaperone — one bans the books, the other assigns the reading list. When both sides of a rivalry agree the history needs editing, the history is the thing they're both afraid of.”
“There's no equivalence here — a curriculum recommendation about teaching communism's true history is civic education, full stop, nothing like a government restricting literature. It's just a coincidence they landed in the same news cycle. A coincidence about the exact same subject. Still a coincidence.”
The receipts
Socialism is gaining ground, particularly among younger adults. It is sometimes modified with the word “democratic,” as in the name Democratic Socialists of America, but the modification is lipstick on a pig. Socialism and communism spring…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.