On September 1, 2012, the federal law “On the Protection of Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development” comes into force.
Irina Balakhonova, editor-in-chief of the Samokat publishing house
Psychologies: Do you find this law useful?
I. B.: Children, of course, need to be protected from what can harm them. But the articles of the law offer very controversial interpretations of what is detrimental to a child’s development and what is permissible. It allows, for example, to ban the publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Thumb Boy (Article 5.2: “Information Forming Disrespect for Parents and (or) Other Family Members”), the cartoon “Just You Wait!”, in which has scenes of smoking, “Little Red Riding Hood”, which describes the violence against a grandmother and a wolf … By such criteria, you can ban all the best children’s literature, including fairy tales by Andersen or the Brothers Grimm.
But the law does not apply to works “having historical, artistic or other cultural value for society.”
I. B.: It is unclear who determines the value of a book to society. We publishers will be forced to prove the cultural significance of what we publish. The main thing is that we have the opportunity to publish books that are acute, problematic, reflecting the conflicts of our era – say, about the life of a child in an incomplete family, a situation where parents are inattentive to children or do not take care of them at all. It is not equally dangerous to talk honestly about the divorce of parents and a detailed description of scenes of violence. Thus, we will not help, but deprive the child of support in difficult moments. Trying to create some ideal sterile world in books and children’s minds, we will not save the child from suffering.