The court ordered the destruction of books about museums and Lao Tzu from the library of the European University in St. Petersburg

The St. Petersburg City Court rejected the appeal of the European University in St. Petersburg (EUSP) against a fine for storing eight books, including a monograph on Lao Tzu and a collection about St. Petersburg museums. The books were published in 1997–2004 with the support of organizations that many years later the Russian authorities recognized as “undesirable.” The court found that EUSP allegedly participated in the activities of these organizations, and ordered the books to be destroyed.

EUSP announced the decision of the St. Petersburg City Court on its website. The university asked to cancel the decisions of the Dzerzhinsky District Court, which in December 2023 fined the university a total of 70 thousand rubles in the case of participation in the activities of undesirable organizations.

The university challenged two identical decisions simultaneously in two identical complaints, but the city court has so far rejected one of them. The second hearing is scheduled for May 13.

The city court of the university rejected the appeal against the decision of the lower court and upheld the decision to fine and destroy the books. This follows from the decisions of the Dzerzhinsky District Court (available to the BBC), which have now entered into force. The court directly demanded that the books be destroyed in the operative part of its decisions.

EUSP did not agree with the decision of the city court and intends to appeal it in cassation.

The decision in the EUSP case means that libraries will have to exclude from their collections books published with the support of “undesirable organizations”, even if they were published long before the organization was included in the relevant register.

All these books are now in danger of being destroyed, Sergei Markov, managing partner of the Markov and Madaminov law firm, told the BBC.

The audit of the EUSP was initiated in May last year by Deputy Prosecutor of St. Petersburg Alexander Yurasov, including for the purpose of “controlling the activities of persons under foreign influence” and “countering extremism.”

During the summer of 2023, the inspection was suspended three times, but in November Yurasov resumed it and opened an administrative case against the university because of books in the university library.

We are talking about scientific works published in 1997-2004 by Russian publishers with the help of foreign sponsors – the Open Society Institute, created by the American businessman George Soros, and the Kennan Institute, a division of the Woodrow Wilson International Center. The first organization was recognized as undesirable by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office in 2015, and the second in 2022.

The books reached the EUSP library no later than 2009 – long before the adoption of the federal law on undesirable organizations in Russia in 2015. After the disgraced institutions were recognized as undesirable in Russia, the university kept the publications (each in a single copy) in a special fund and did not issue them to anyone.

Immediately after the prosecutor’s inspection and the seizure of books by security forces, the university completely wrote them off from its library collection. But this did not help the university. The court decided that until the books were taken by the security forces, the university had the “potential possibility of issuing them to library users.”

EUSP emphasizes that neither the Open Society Institute nor the Kennan Institute (a division of the Woodrow Wilson International Center) are neither the publishers nor the authors of the books, and their content is in no way connected with the activities of organizations recognized as “undesirable” in Russia. EUSP also noted that the current legislation, in principle, does not establish the procedure for handling books related to undesirable organizations.

EUSP argued that he was illegally issued two fines – in fact, for one alleged violation identified by the prosecutor’s office on May 17. According to the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO RF), no one should be held liable for the same violation twice. It was still not known how the Dzerzhinsky District Court motivated its decisions.

The district court found not one, but two offenses in the form of possession of books published with the support of undesirable organizations – each decision refers to four books.

The list included a monograph on the interpretation of Lao Tzu, research on the development of science and the Internet in Russia, materials on the humanities and socio-economic disciplines, and a collection of materials from a Russian-British seminar held in St. Petersburg on the work of museums in a market economy.

Article 20.33 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation on participation in the activities of undesirable organizations from 2021 allows officials to be fined in the amount of 20 to 50 thousand rubles, and legal entities – from 50 to 100 thousand.

The District Court ruled that the European University had violated Article 20.33. Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, which prohibits participation in the activities of an undesirable organization. Judge Alexander Ponomareva imposed two identical decisions on the university with two fines of 35 thousand rubles each.

The court found that the publication of the books was sponsored by foreign organizations that are now recognized as undesirable in Russia. The court drew attention to the fact that the title pages of two books bear a copyright symbol [©] “Open Society” Soros.

There is also an indication from the court of the participation of the same institute in the publication of materials from the Russian-British seminar “Museums of St. Petersburg in a Market Economy” – another book seized during the inspection. The future organization, undesirable for the Russian authorities, helped the project along with the International Fund for the Rescue of St. Petersburg-Leningrad, the forum of business leaders under the auspices of the Prince of Wales and the union of museum workers of St. Petersburg and the region.

The prosecutor’s office, having come to check the university in May, found all eight books in the electronic catalog of the EUSP library, accessible to readers. The agency considered this a violation of the law on undesirable organizations – it prohibits the “storage for the purpose of distribution” of information materials of these organizations. The security forces and the court decided that the university should have excluded these books from the library collection.

The publications got into the university library long before the institutions were recognized as undesirable, and after that “they were stored in a special closed fund and were not issued to anyone,” EUSP asserted. In addition, after a prosecutor’s inspection, the university itself wrote off these books and excluded them from its collections.

The court decided that the storage of books in a special fund and the restriction of access to them had not been proven, and according to the official rules of the library, readers have access to all its funds and shelves.

The university’s defenders argued in the appeal that the Civil Code separates the concepts of “author”, “publisher” and “right holder”, and the law on “undesirable organizations” prohibits the distribution only of materials published by them.

According to the defense, the prosecutor’s office did not prove that organizations undesirable in Russia were the authors or publishers of the books – they were only published with their support (along with the support, for example, of the Russian Ministry of Education and “within the framework of humanitarian programs with the participation of the Russian authorities”).

The works seized by the prosecutor’s office from EUSP are also stored in the Russian National Library, the university’s complaints stated.

Moreover, before organizations were recognized as undesirable, the publication of books with the support of such organizations was legitimate and could not be criminalized, the university also insisted.

The contents of the books are not related to the activities of the Soros and Kenan institutes, which means that the ban does not apply to such materials at all, EUSP representatives stated, citing clarifications of the law in a letter from the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The university also noted that some of the books for which it was fined were either never issued to readers at all (apparently, they were not in demand), while others were issued long before the law on undesirable organizations appeared in Russia and the recognition of the Soros and Kenan institutions as such. Therefore, the university’s actions cannot be classified as “storage with intent to distribute,” the university believes.

Such cases have never happened before, Markov told the BBC. The law allows the storage of books published by undesirable organizations, but only prohibits their distribution, the lawyer recalled.

Other universities have long been hiding “toxic” publications from readers. “Books by “extremists” and “undesirable organizations” cannot be handed out (at home) – they are put away in the archive, but previously, upon request, it was possible to work with them in the reading room, we consulted on this matter with colleagues from other libraries and lawyers,” – a former employee of one of the Moscow universities told the BBC (the BBC did not name his name or the name of the university for security reasons).

“The position of the court and the prosecutor’s office is that storing books in a library is equivalent to their distribution and, accordingly, to participation in the activities of an undesirable organization,” Markov explained. The court considered that such books, in principle, should be excluded from the library register, the lawyer notes. The university, according to him, is charged with the fact that the library had these books in principle, and theoretically they could have been given to someone.

The date the organization was declared undesirable, according to the lawyer, really does not matter. In fact, the Russian authorities returned the Soviet system of “special storage” (closed collections, access to which was strictly limited) to Russian libraries.

The European University is a private university founded in St. Petersburg in 1994. It was initially funded by grants from American and European NGOs – for example, the Soros Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation. The activities of these organizations are now recognized as undesirable in Russia, but the university has not received funds from them for a long time.

Inspectors in May 2023 also studied the publications of teachers and the topics of students’ dissertations – including in political science, history and sociology, and also attended classes. The check then affected several dozen teachers and several hundred undergraduates and graduate students. The university itself assumed that the audit could result in the closure of the university or its individual programs.

Markov considers the university’s arguments in the book case convincing and says that from the point of view of the law, such decisions should be canceled. “But given the context of the cases, the absolutely broad interpretation of the law by the prosecutor’s office and the court, I do not believe that the decisions will be overturned,” the expert said. – If these decisions stand, then for libraries this means that books published both by the “undesirable organizations” themselves and with their support should be excluded, at least from the lists of storage funds, and, in the limit, completely removed from the collections – since storage is also considered illegal.”

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