Censorship in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

This article is part of the series: Politics and government of the Soviet Union

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Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced.

Censorship was performed in two main directions:

• State secrets were handled by Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in the Press (also known as Glavlit) was in charge of censoring all publications and broadcasting for state secrets
• Censorship, in accordance with the official ideology and politics of the Communist Party was performed by several organizations:
  • Goskomizdat censored all printed matter: fiction, poetry, etc.
  • Goskino, in charge of cinema
  • Gosteleradio, in charge of radio and television broadcasting
  • The First Department in many agencies and institutions, such as the State Statistical Committee (Goskomstat), was responsible for assuring that state secrets and other sensitive information only reached authorized hands.

Destruction of printed matter

Nikolai Yezhov, the man strolling to Joseph Stalin's left, was executed in 1940. He was edited out from a photo by Soviet censors. Such retouching was a common occurrence during Stalin's reign.

Soviet government implemented mass destruction of pre-revolutionary and foreign books and journals from libraries. Only "special collections" (spetskhran), accessible by special permit from the KGB, contained old and politically incorrect material.

Soviet books and journals were also removed from libraries according to changes of Soviet history. Often Soviet citizens preferred to destroy politically incorrect publications and photos, because those connected to it were frequently persecuted.

After the arrest of Lavrentiy Beria all subscribers of the second edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia obtained a page to replace the one with Lavrentiy Beria article, instead containing Vitus Bering articles.

Censorship of images

Main article: Censorship of images in the Soviet Union

Repressed persons were routinely removed not only from texts, but also from photos, posters and paintings.

Translations

Translations of foreign publications were often produced in a truncated form, accompanied with extensive corrective footnotes. E.g. in the Russian 1976 translation of Basil Liddell Hart's History of the Second World War pre-war purges of Red Army officers, secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, many details of the Winter War, occupation of Baltic states, Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Allied assistance to the Soviet Union during the war, many other Western Allies' efforts, the Soviet leadership's mistakes and failures, criticism of the Soviet Union and other content were censored out.

Control over information

Main articles: Printed media in the Soviet Union, Television in the Soviet Union, Radio in the Soviet Union.

All media in the Soviet Union were controlled by the state including television and radio broadcasting, newspaper, magazine and book publishing. This was achieved by state ownership of all production facilities, thus making all those employed in media state employees. This extended to the fine arts including the theater, opera and ballet. Art and music was controlled by ownership of distribution and performance venues.

Censorship was backed in cases where performances did not meet with the favor of the Soviet leadership with newspaper campaigns against offending material and sanctions applied though party controlled professional organizations.

In the case of book publishing a manuscript had to pass censorship and the decision of a state owned publishing house to publish and distribute the book. Books which met with official favor, for example, the collected speeches of Leonid Brezhnev were printed in vast quantities while less favored literary material might be published in limited numbers and not distributed widely. Popular escapist literature such as the popular best-sellers, mysteries and romances which form the bulk of Western publishing was nearly non-existent.

Possession and use of copying machines was tightly controlled in order to hinder production and distribution of samizdat, illegal self-published books and magazines. Possession of even a single samizdat manuscript such as a book by Andrei Sinyavsky was a serious crime which might involve a visit from the KGB. Another outlet for works which did not find favor with the authorities was publishing abroad.

It was the practice of libraries in the Soviet Union to restrict access to back issues of journals and newspapers more than three years old.

Jamming of foreign radio stations

Due to appearance of the foreign radio stations broadcasting in Russian and inaccessible for censorship, as well as appearance of a large number of shortwave receivers, massive jamming of these stations was applied in USSR using high-power radio-electronic equipment. It continues for almost 60 years. Soviet radio censorship network was the most powerful in the world.

All information related to radio jamming and usage of corresponding equipment was concerned as a state secret. On the eve of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow the "Olympic panorama" magazine was intended to publish a photo with hardly noticeable jamming tower located in the Fili district. Despite that the photo was made from public place it was permitted to publication only after the tower was cut from it.

One more way to limit Soviet citizens in access to outer information was the control over the production of receivers with frequency range shorter than 25 meters. Receivers with those ranges were primarily exported and were sold very rarely within the country.

Circumvention of censorship

Samizdat, allegoric styles, smuggling, and publishing abroad were used as methods of circumventing censorship.

For example, an underground library was functioning in Odessa from 1967 to 1982, which was used by around 2000 readers.

Soviet dissidents were active fighters against censorship. Samizdat was the main method of information dissemination. Part of the dissident movement was engaged in protection of civil rights. The first in USSR uncensored newsletter distributed through Samizdat during 15 years - from 30 April 1968 to 17 November 1983. Such organizations as the Moscow Helsinki Group or the Free interprofessional labor union were also engaged in similar activities.

There were cases of literary hoaxes, where authors made up a translated source. Poet Vladimir Lifschitz, for instance, invented a British poet named James Clifford, who alledgedly died in 1944 on the Western Front. Vladimir published poetry which he claimed was written by James Clifford,but which was actually his own work.

One more method was so called "dog method". According it one should include an obviously ridiculous and attention-drawing vivid episode in the work. As a result, minor nuances went unnoticed. In this manner, a movie named The Diamond Arm was saved after the director, Leonid Gaidai, intentionally included a nuclear explosion at the end of the film. The Goskino commission was horrified and requested that the explosion be removed. After resisting for a while Gaidai removed the explosion and the rest of the film was left almost untouched.

One of the important information channels were anecdotes. Through this folklore form people often express their critical attitude to authorities and communistic ideology. Political anecdotes became widespread in 1960 - 1970. In 1980 a good anecdote propagated from Moscow to Vladivostok in three days.

See also

Eastern Bloc information dissemination Socialist Realism First Department Propaganda in the Soviet Union Drug policy of the Soviet Union

Other Eastern Bloc states: Censorship in East Germany Censorship in the People's Republic of Poland

External links

• Attacks on Intelligentsia: Censorship - from Library of Congress web site
• Censorship in the Soviet Union and its Cultural and Professional Results for Arts and Art Libraries
• Lewis, B. E. (1977). Soviet Taboo. Review of Vtoraya Mirovaya Voina, History of the Second World War by B. Liddel Gart (Russian translation). Soviet Studies 29 (4), 603-606.