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He may never reach the same recognized status as Yevgeny Zamyatin We or Mikhail Bulgakov Master and Margarita but like these satirical masterpieces of the 20th century, the zombie apocalypse novel earned the ire of Russian censors in Moscow. In a sign of a growing crackdown on artistic creativity under Vladimir Putin’s rule, prosecutors demanded that Ivan Filippov’s book Mouse should be withdrawn from sale in Russia on the grounds that it threatens public order.
Mouse tells the story of an infected rodent that escapes from a scientific institute where experts are developing a serum to extend Putin’s life. In the ensuing chaos, most of Moscow’s residents turn into zombies that act like mice. It’s lighthearted stuff, and as a critique of contemporary Russian society it falls short of the standards set by more serious novels like Sergei Lebedev’s Oblivionpublished in 2011.
However, the authorities obviously wanted to catch Mouse in their trap—and Filippov could well sense what was coming. The journalist and researcher came into conflict with the Kremlin after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and moved abroad. In April, he was labeled a “foreign agent” — a designation for Putin opponents that carries connotations of espionage and treason.
Filippov’s sin was using the social media app Telegram as a platform for critical analysis of the barrage of war commentary and propaganda that appears on the web’s feeds. In Russian, his own channel is called “Na Zzzzzapadnom fronte bez peremen”, which means “Calm down on the Wwwwwestern front”. This is a nod to Erich Marie Remarque’s 1929 anti-war novel of that title, as well as the “Z” symbol of militaristic nationalism that came to the fore during the war in Ukraine.
Although it was predictable, the plaintiffs’ move against Mouse it also tells the story of the shrinking space for free speech under Putin, while offering an opportunity to compare today’s conditions with those of past Russian political systems. In the years immediately following Putin’s takeover of power in 1999-2000, Russian authors were more or less left to their own devices. The Kremlin viewed literature as a minor irritant rather than a serious threat, arguing that most Russians formed their political views under the influence of television and later the Internet, media it kept under closer supervision or control.
All this has changed especially since the invasion of Ukraine and the accompanying militarization of Russian society and economy. Three months ago, a Moscow court ordered the arrest of Mikhail Zygar, the former editor-in-chief of TV Rain, on charges of spreading “fake news” about the Russian armed forces. Fortunately for Zygar, he now lives abroad – as does Grigory Chkhartishvili, a detective novelist who uses the name Boris Akunin and was put on the official list of “terrorists and extremists” last year.
Censorship and repression are now at levels that resemble those of the post-Stalin years of the late 1950s and 1960s. At that time, Mikhail Suslov, an ideologue of the Kremlin, told Vasily Grossman that his epic novel Life and fate it was so subversive that it would remain unpublished at home for 200 years. Boris Pasternak Doctor Zhivago was banned for its not-so-positive portrayal of the Bolshevik Revolution. Both novels were published in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, when freedom of speech expanded under Mikhail Gorbachev.
Official attack on Mouse it is not the first time in the history of Russian literature that animals have gotten the author into trouble. In a novel about World War II, Anatoly Kuznetsov described the entry of Nazi forces into Kiev in 1941 and included a paragraph about the great size of the German horses. The censor complained that Kuznetsov was humiliating Russian horses.
tony.barber@ft.com