Dmitry Silin, a businessman from Ivanovo and one of the Orwell Library’s founders, has left Russia. After the war began in Ukraine, Silin distributed books about war and the dystopia 1984 to the citizens for free. His colleague Anastasia Rudenko reported this.
Dmitry Silin, a businessman from Ivanovo and co-founder of the independent Orwell Library, has left Russia. He stated that "he was very offended that he could not have done anything for his country."
After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Silin, together with lawyer Anastasia Rudenko, distributed more than 600 dystopias in the streets of Ivanovo, organized an online library named after Orwell, where anyone could read dystopias and other books for free. He organized the screening of films banned in the USSR, held an action in support of freedom of speech, registered websites with the word "special operation" in the title and pictures about peace. The resident of Ivanovo opened a real library, near which he hung the 1984 flag.
In June, the police detained a French journalist of France 24, Karina Chabour, who wanted to shoot a story about Silin’s action with books by Orwell after interviewing a resident of Shuya. Together with the journalist, the police detained Sergei Veselov from Shuya, a defendant in a criminal case about creating anti-war graffiti. A protocol was drawn up against her, but the article is unknown.
