Venäjä/Kirjojen lukuinto hiipuu

The St. Petersburg Times: Russians' Love Affair With Books Fading

"About 37 percent of Russian people never read books, and 52 percent never buy them."

"These alarming statistics were announced in a land that in Soviet times claimed to be the leading nation of readers at the Fourth Russian Congress of the Russian Book Union in St. Petersburg last week."

"Surveys showed that only 23 percent of Russians consider themselves active readers, while 17 percent said they read only fiction. Many Russians confessed they limit their reading by literature on their specialty and read only books about health and medicine or cookbooks."

"The Russian Book Union fretted about the data, while experts hurried to look for the reason of such a drastic turnaround."

"Dina Solovyova, head of marketing department at the city's Bukvoyed bookstore chain, said the main reason for the decrease of interest in reading had to do with competition from alternative sources of information such as television and the Internet."