Officially banned in the Soviet Union until 1988—circulated only as samizdat at the risk of long prison sentences until the era of glasnost and perestroika—George Orwell’s 1984 topped the lists in fiction downloads in mid-December in the Russian Federation. TASS, the Russian state news agency, reported on December 13 that Orwell’s dystopia had led the 2022 e‑book sales totals in fiction on the platform LitRes, a Russian online audio and e‑book seller, and stood as the second most popular download in any category. Reports in Western media, where rumors circulate weekly that up to half the …