In May 2025, three employees of Popcorn Books — a publisher of young adult fiction — were detained in Moscow. They were charged in connection with the distribution of LGBT literature — specifically, the publication of the novel “Leto v pionerskom galstuke” (“Summer in a Pioneer Tie”) by Yelena Malisova and Katerina Silvanova. The defendants spent nearly a year under house arrest before it was eased to a restriction on certain activities. In June 2026, one of the three — former sales director Pavel Ivanov — went to trial. He had cut a deal with investigators and testified against others named in what became known as the “book publishers’ case.” During closing arguments, Ivanov said he had fought this his whole life, going back to Soviet times, when he caught “perverts” as part of a Komsomol patrol. The trial concluded in a single day, and Ivanov received a suspended sentence. Mediazona journalists attended the proceedings and reported on what Ivanov said there.
Pavel Ivanov, the Popcorn Books sales director, and two other employees — executive director Dmitry Protopopov and Artyom Vakhlyaev, who oversaw warehouse operations and distribution — were charged with organizing and taking part in the activities of an “extremist organization.” The criminal prosecution stemmed from the distribution of what authorities called “LGBT literature,” a category that investigators applied to titles including O chem molchit lastochka (“What the Swallow Keeps Silent About”) by Yelena Malisova and Katerina Silvanova, Okno vo dvor (“Rear Window”) by Mikita Franco, Svita korolya (“The King’s Men”) by Nora Sakavich, Nazovi menya svoim imenem (“Call Me by Your Name”) by André Aciman, and others.
Ivanov was detained in May 2025. By that summer he had reached a cooperation agreement with investigators, and in June 2026 his testimony against employees of the Eksmo publishing group — which included Popcorn Books — was read aloud in court.
Ivanov said he had worked at Popcorn Books since 2016, under the supervision of editor-in-chief Satenik Anastasyan. He described her as a “committed feminist” who was passionate about young adult books and sought out “provocative topics to publish.” Among the titles published under Anastasyan’s leadership, Ivanov named Volchye vremya. Germaniya i nemtsy: 1945–1955 (“Wolf Time: Germany and the Germans, 1945–1955”) and Zakrytyye. Zhizn gomoseksualov v Sovetskom Soyuze (“Closed: The Lives of Homosexuals in the Soviet Union”), published in 2022.
In December 2022, President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning the “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations.” Ivanov said he had warned, even before the bill became law, that if it passed, all of Popcorn Books’ titles would be outlawed. After the law took effect, he said, employees continued working with LGBTQ-themed books in an effort to meet the sales targets Eksmo tracked.
According to Ivanov’s testimony, in late 2022 he spoke with Eksmo CEO Yevgeny Kapyev, who wanted to know when Popcorn Books would sell through the entire print run of O chem molchit lastochka. “I said the book was banned from sale,” Ivanov said. “Kapyev replied that we should look at Kazakhstan, where LGBT is not banned and where any product can be sold.”
In January 2023, Popcorn Books titles began selling in Kazakhstan. In Ivanov’s view, the books could then make their way onto online marketplaces and “wind up back in Russia.” He said Eksmo’s management had a scheme for selling books with LGBTQ+ content. “Commercial interest came first,” Ivanov said. “Their goal was to make as much money as possible. Educating the public hadn’t been on their agenda for a long time.”
He left Popcorn Books in October 2024, saying he believed the publisher’s activities were illegal. Ivanov described his decision to testify as a “deliberate choice” and said he did so voluntarily. “I believed it was my civic duty to give truthful testimony about people who were, and probably still are, engaged in anti-government activity, in violation of the Constitution of the Russian Federation,” Ivanov told the court. “I spoke about this in the State Duma back in 2023, asking the government to impose censorship on book publishing, and I still believe that is necessary.”
Ivanov described his cooperation with investigators to the judge:
I gave truthful testimony about unidentified individuals from the Eksmo publishing house. During face-to-face confrontations with unidentified individuals from Eksmo, I fully exposed their criminal activity at the publishing house, since I saw it all happen. I was a witness, and I saw how they drew us into this activity. I gave the investigation all the information I had, remembered, and knew.
In his closing remarks, Ivanov said he repented and regretted not having left Eksmo sooner. “I regret what I did,” he said. “It’s a great disgrace for me. I fought against this my whole life, going back to Soviet times, when I caught perverts as a member of a Komsomol patrol.”
He added that he had always supported Putin and had taken part in a religious procession. He would have liked to go to the front, he said, but a heart attack ruled it out: “No medical board would pass me, and who needs 60-year-old guys there anyway.” Ivanov promised to wash away “this black stain” from his record.
In his final statement, Ivanov said he was ready to help investigators catch the other figures in the case: “For now, some of them haven’t been convicted and are hiding abroad.”
On June 25, Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court sentenced Ivanov to four years in prison, suspended. The maximum sentence under one of the charges against him is six years; under another, eight. The criminal cases against the two other defendants, Dmitry Protopopov and Artyom Vakhlyaev, have not yet gone to trial.
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