Cancellation of age marking: who will be allowed books from the school curriculum and the Bible

“Today we are closing a very long, and, in my opinion, very important story,” said one of its authors, head of the Duma Committee on Culture, Elena Yampolskaya (“ER”), reporting on December 15 on the results of finalizing the text of the bill for the second reading. And summed up, in her words, “a dry result.”

The history of the adoption of the law was really long, and the result really turned out to be “dry”.

Introduced by a solid group of deputies from all Duma factions, the initiative on some revision of the age marking rules for works of literature and art was adopted by the State Duma in the first reading back in 2019, that is, in the last convocation.

The current labeling rules, prescribed in the law “On the Protection of Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development”, provide for several degrees, so to speak, of protection: 0+. 6+, 12+, 16+ and 18+. The authors of the bill considered these rules redundant: they talked about absurd situations when the Bible and the Koran were sold in bookstores with the marking “16+”, as well as books by Viktor Astafyev, Mikhail Sholokhov and Russian poets from the school curriculum with the same sign or even marked as “ 18+.

What was proposed in the document adopted on first reading?

Now information products that “have significant historical, artistic or other cultural value for society” are not subject to labeling by law anyway. But who and on the basis of what criteria should determine this value is not clear. The deputies wanted to empower the government to develop appropriate criteria. This is first.

The law “On the Protection of Children…” considers media in any form, and any books, performances, films, to be “information products”; and circuses, and concerts, and clubs, and, in principle, everything that is distributed on the Internet, and CDs, and posters, etc., etc. The draft law, adopted in the first reading, proceeded from the fact that only the “18+” marking should become mandatory for works of literature and art that are sold in bookstores and loaned out in libraries or shown in cinemas, theaters, clubs, circuses, which cuts off what Russians under the age of 18 are strictly forbidden to see, hear and read. And everything else, the deputies believed, could be labeled approximately as books were labeled in Soviet times: “for children of primary school age”, “for children of secondary school age”, “for children of senior school age”, “not recommended for children”. “Such labeling will be useful for parents and teachers,” said Alexander Sholokhov (“ER”), a member of the cultural committee at the time: according to him, this will allow “to get away from absurd situations when the same book from different publishers can be labeled according to differently, depending on how much the publisher is playing it safe, protecting itself from law enforcement zeal.” This is second.

No changes were made to the list of dangerous and therefore forbidden information for children. (By the way, since then, this list has expanded even more. Literally in the last weeks, “18+” has become information that “demonstrates” non-traditional sexual relations or “preferences”, as well as information that may induce a sex change: previously, only that was forbidden that she promoted non-traditional sexual relations, and also everything that was written, sung, created, played by citizens whom the Russian authorities recognized as “foreign agents”.)

After the adoption in the first reading, the bill was discussed for four years by various interested authorities and deputies within the framework of the committee and a working group specially created in the State Duma, headed by First Vice Speaker Alexander Zhukov (“ER”), Ms. Yampolskaya recalled. “A lot of meetings were held,” and “the negotiation process was very difficult,” she admitted.

In October 2020, the topic of labeling works of literature and art was raised at a meeting of the Council for Culture and Art under the President of the Russian Federation. Following the event, in January 2021, Vladimir Putin instructed the State Duma, with the participation of the government, “to consider the possibility of clarifying the mechanisms for legislative regulation of children’s access to information products that have significant historical, artistic or other cultural value for society, including by enshrining in the legislation of the Russian Federation of Criteria for Classifying Information Products as Information Products of the Named Category. The deadline is May 1, 2021.

But the question, as we can see, “hangs” until the end of 2022. And the result of the agreements and “consideration of the issue” with the participation of the government turned out to be fully consistent with the proverb “swing for the ruble, strike for a penny.” “Only those novels remained that did not cause any doubts or fears from any of those parties with whom we coordinated the drafting of the bill,” Ms. Yampolskaya explained, “a number of novellas did not find understanding,” and the law-making process always “ looking for a compromise…

What happened in the end?

There remains a norm that tightens the current rules: the distribution certificates of films must contain information on the prohibition of distribution or on the restriction of distribution among children.

Not only textbooks (they are not marked even now), but also all literary works that are included in school curricula, were removed from the law “On the Protection of Children …” on age marking. The head of the committee assured that this provision of the law had been agreed with the Ministry of Education.

And the main religious books of the traditional religions recognized in Russia: Christianity (Bible), Islam (Koran), Judaism (Tanakh) and Buddhism (Ganjur) are also removed from the law.

There were no clearly defined criteria for classifying all other works of literature and art as a free zone from marking, and will not appear. There will be no more free approach to marking works of literature and art in general either. The only thing that has been achieved is that in the paragraph of the law “On the Protection of Children …”, which refers to the procedure for organizing and conducting an examination of information products for permissibility or prohibition for children, it will be written that not only specialists in the field of pedagogy, developmental psychology, developmental physiology, child psychiatry, as now, but also specialists in the field of “culturology, art history and art history”.

Roskomnadzor is authorized to monitor the extent to which any information products in the country comply with the requirements of the law on protecting children from harmful information.

Ms. Yampolskaya did not say what other bodies and structures, besides the Ministry of Education, participated in finalizing the text of the bill. But, according to MK, the Ministry of Culture, Roskomnadzor, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Russian Federation (first it was Anna Kuznetsova, who has now become the Vice Speaker of the State Duma, and then Maria Lvova-Belova), the president’s adviser on culture and art, Vladimir Tolstoy, and Roskomnadzor, in particular, opposed more significant mitigation of the requirements for labeling works of literature and art.

“A terrible struggle has unfolded around this bill,” said Elena Drapeko, one of the authors of the initiative, the first deputy head of the Duma Committee on Culture, in a conversation with MK. Opponents of its adoption, according to her, “stated that the child and that, and this should not see that it hurts him,” and in the expert group that is now engaged in the examination of works of art, they approach works “from only one point of view : What if they kiss? suddenly someone said the wrong word? Ms. Drapeko called this approach “terry hypocrisy that has flourished and prevents people from living.” Therefore, so far, she admitted, it was only possible to achieve exemption from the mandatory age marking of literature from the school curriculum and religious literature. She considers the possibility of attracting culturologists and art historians as experts as an important innovation.

The Federation Council may approve the law next week. It will enter into force 10 days after its publication after the President’s signature. Most likely, it will be in early January.