A court in the Russian city of Arzamas, 400 kilometers east of Moscow, has ruled to block access to an article based on an 1837 book called “How to Take Bribes Correctly,” published on the “Arzamas'' educational website.
The material has been added to a blacklist of banned websites of Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor but is currently still available online.
The article was based on a 19th-century book called “The Art of How to Take Bribes.”
“The book was published in the year of Pushkin’s death and is available in Russian libraries. It enriches our knowledge about Russian life and culture in the 19th century,” the editor of the Arzamas website Filip Dziadko told the Meduza news website.
Russian courts have blocked access to websites which cover bribes before. In 2014, Roskomnadzor blocked an article called “How to correctly give bribes in Russia” which was published on the website of popular magazine Maxim.
“I hope that this mistake will be fixed soon. I am less sure that Russia will eradicate corruption — until people learn to read, this certainly won't happen,” Dziadko told Meduza.
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