Senior Communist Party lawmaker Nina Ostanina has submitted a formal complaint to Russia’s Culture Ministry over its decision to allow a rave to take place inside Moscow’s Lenin library on Halloween.
The Russian State Library, popularly known as “Leninka,” hosted the literary-themed rave last weekend together with Russia’s largest publishing group, Eksmo-AST. Organizers said more than 3,000 people attended.
Eksmo-AST said the purpose of the event, which prohibited tobacco and alcohol consumption, was to “engage a young audience with literature in the language of rhythm and light” and noted that no property was damaged.
In a letter sent to Russian Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova, Ostanina reportedly asked the Culture Ministry to provide lawmakers in the lower-house State Duma with guidelines on how it determines whether to allow “entertainment and commercial events” to take place inside government buildings listed as being historically significant.
“For me, the library is truly a temple, a sanctuary,” Ostanina told the news outlet RBC. “You can’t claim there’s a separate ‘hall of orgies’ and a ‘hall of books’,” she added, citing Eksmo-AST’s claim that dance floors at the rave were located in separate halls from books.
Earlier this week, Ostanina, who heads the State Duma Committee for the Protection of Families, said she was working together with the Justice Ministry to develop a bill that would codify into law “what is good and what is bad” following the Lenin library rave.
“Since people clearly aren’t absorbing these obvious things from their mother’s milk, a teacher’s word or public media, we’ll have to define it by law,” Ostanina said during a parliamentary meeting.
State Duma Deputy Speaker, Vladislav Davankov, a member of the right-leaning New People party, has defended the library rave and urged critics to stop “looking for a reason to ban every creative idea.”
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