Russia bans Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’

MOSCOW - Russia has joined the list of countries banning Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical work “Mein Kampf”, 65 years after the Nazi dictator’s suicide.

The state prosecutor justified the decision in Moscow Friday by saying the “extremist” work contains ideas that preach murder and racial discrimination, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russian media outlets complained the move came 84 years too late, pointing out that Hitler had written “Mein Kampf” in the mid-1920s.

The book contained demands for Lebensraum, a concept calling for a defined territory for the German people, at the expense of the Soviet Union and described Slavic people as inferior beings.

Human rights advocates have long lamented the high number of right-wing extremist attacks in Russia. In the last year alone, 74 people were killed in racially motivated crimes.

Historian Jan Ratchinski of the organisation Memorial, which works to preserve information about Soviet-era persecution, compared “Mein Kampf” to books written by Russian revolutionary Lenin and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Both called for mass terror in their works, he said.

Germany banned the dissemination of “Mein Kampf” decades ago.