Knihazbor Publishing House Officially Liquidated In Belarus

The CEO of the publishing house announced this.

On October 26, the Minsk City Executive Committee decided to exclude the Knihazbor publishing house from the Unified State Register. The CEO of the publishing house, Henadz Viniarski, announced this on Facebook.

“That’s it, and there is no Knihazbor publishing house de jure,” he stated.

Pressure on the publishing house began in 2021, when employees of the Financial Investigations Department of the Belarusian State Control Committee came to the Knihazbor office and Viniarski’s residence, took away his digital equipment and half a thousand copies of the novel “Revolution” by Viktar Martsinovich.

At that time, the “book publishers case” involved several publishing houses that were allegedly suspected of large-scale tax evasion. Then the criminal case was dropped.

In October 2022, the Belkniha chain of state bookstores terminated contracts with Knihazbor and other publishing houses that print books in the Belarusian language.

In December 2022, the Ministry of Information suspended the activities of the publishing house, and in January 2023, the liquidation process began.

The Belarusian authorities declared several Knihazbor’s books, including works of classical writers, “extremist”.