Petition launched to remove Penguin’s 'anti-Russian' poster

The ads are part of a new promotional campaign to mark the launch of a new series of Pocket Penguins

A petition has been launched to remove a poster created by Penguin Random House.

The minimalist posters shown at London Underground stations display a quotation taken from Russian author Ivan Turgenev’s Father and Sons: “Aristocracy, liberalism, progress, principles… useless words! A Russian doesn’t need them!”

The petition claims the excerpt is explicitly “anti-Russian” and labels the poster as “low, cheap propaganda, based on ethnic hatred between the nations.”

It demands the posters are removed and that Penguin provides “an official apology for those who have been appalled by this advertisement!”

The ads are part of Penguin’s new promotional campaign to mark the launch of a new series of Pocket Penguins.

A spokesman from Penguin maintained that the posters were not intended to belittle Russia: “Alongside Turgenev, there are books by Tolstoy, Gorky, Bulgakov, and it is testimony to the quality of Russian writers that they make up such a large proportion of the series.

“Our poster campaign is designed to intrigue people to find out more and introduce them to books we believe they will treasure. The campaign is intended as a celebration of these wonderful books.”

Organised by Anna White, the petition maintains: “Penguin Random House has intentionally cited the quote to take a true meaning out of context and have intentionally chosen NOT to include the author and the name of the book on their poster.”

It states that the original quote should read: “Aristocracy, liberalism, progress, principles ... what a lot of foreign ... and useless words. A Russian would not want them as a gift”

Slava Rapoport, who signed the petition, observed that the quoted words are “said by [Yevgeny] Bazarov, who is in fact an anti-hero and is known as a nihilist”.

Anton Shkrunin, another signatory, observed: “The context is the protagonist picking at his opponent's ideological short-sightedness to social injustice, where language itself serves the interests of an isolated, self-perpetuating group.”

According to Russia Today, a Kremlin-funded television network, disgruntled readers “wondered whether that ad campaign would still be allowed” if the word “Russian” was switched to “Muslim”. It also reported an angry reader as warning: “Russians can reply to words with punches.”

At the time of writing, the petition 1,655 supporters.