A Russian translation of Harari's book was published in June 2019. However, the Russian media noticed that several passages about Russia and its
President Putin were
excluded from the translation. In particular, the chapter about
post-truth begins in the Russian edition by referring to
Donald Trump's speeches instead of Putin's false statements during the
Russian annexation of Crimea. The representatives of Harari admitted that this change was authorized.
Leonid Bershidsky in
Moscow Times called it "caution — or, to call it by its proper name, cowardice", and Nettanel Slyomovics in
Haaretz claimed that Harari "is sacrificing those same liberal ideas that he presumes to represent". In a response, Harari stated that he "was warned that due to these few examples Russian censorship will not allow distribution of a Russian translation of the book" and that he "therefore faced a dilemma", namely to "replace these few examples with other examples, and publish the book in Russia," or "change nothing, and publish nothing", and that he "preferred publishing, because Russia is a leading global power and it seemed important that the book's ideas should reach readers in Russia, especially as the book is still very critical of the Putin regime – just without naming names." ==See also==