Individuum announced it is ceasing operations after 11 years of activity

Kiselev wrote that the books they had been working on in recent months will “definitely be released”, but already by other publishers. He did not name the reasons for the closure and described the end of Individuum’s story as “sudden, but not unexpected”.

The publishing house Individuum was founded in 2015 and primarily published contemporary nonfiction. In 2023, the owner of Individuum and its affiliated Popcorn Books became the company Eksmo.

Before the bans were introduced in Russia, Individuum and Popcorn Books published, among other things, books whose characters were LGBT people. In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court, at the request of the Justice Ministry, recognized the nonexistent “international public LGBT movement” as extremist and banned its activities in the country.

In May 2025, in a criminal case on “extremism”, former Popcorn Books employee Artem Vakhlyaev, former sales director of the publishing house Pavel Ivanov, and Individuum executive director Dmitry Protopopov were detained. Investigators claimed that employees of OOO “Individuum Print” “for mercenary motives published and sold books promoting the activities of the LGBT movement”.

In 2026, Vakhlyaev, Ivanov, and Protopopov were each sentenced to four years in prison, suspended. Earlier, in January, Popcorn Books announced it was ceasing operations.

Sources

• Radio Liberty