A necessary tool in an emerging nation?
A comprehensive definition of the term ‘censorship’ is beyond the scope of this dissertation – but at this point, it might be useful to note a few influential ideas on the nature of this practice both in the Soviet Union during the 1930s, and beyond.
The Russian scholar, Arlen Blium, has written widely on the subject of Glavlit and censorship and has proposed five levels or filters of censorial control in Soviet society – ranging from the individual author’s own internal scrutiny of his or her work through to the editor of that work, and all the way up to organisations such as Glavlit and the political police.[1] Glasgow academic, Samantha Sherry rejects this more established view of censorship in the Soviet Union, describing Blium’s analysis as: ‘simplistic, top-down…’[2] – echoing the debate between the ‘totalitarian’ analysis of the Soviet Union, and the ‘revisionist’ school of thinking, which sought to move away from the top-down approach to the Stalin era.
Sherry, noting ideas from Foucault and Bourdieu on the boundaries that surround any discourse, proposed a definition of Soviet censorship as a continuum from explicit to implicit censorship: ‘… a system of control which can range from explicit orders to the implicit actions of the author him/herself, all of which result from the overarching state ideology’.[3]
While Blium’s view is often cited in the literature on Soviet censorship with Sherry’s perspective seen as bringing Blium’s ideas up to date in historiographical terms, one could argue that at this point it is useful to examine the question of censorship from a fresh perspective – and here, by stepping back from the focus on the specifically Soviet situation, may enrich our view of Soviet censorship.
Annabel Patterson’s enquiry into the nature of European censorship in the early modern period sheds light on the Soviet experience in two key respects: in the role of censorship and the state in emergent nations, and how writers used ambiguity within their writing as a tool to evade censorship.
First, Patterson makes the link between censorship and the role of literature in an emergent nation: the early modern period in European history being a time when ‘all the major powers were themselves emergent nations, engaged in a struggle for self-definition as well as for physical territory, and when, in consequence, freedom of expression not only was not taken for granted, but was a major subject of political and intellectual concern.’[4] If we apply this explanation to the Soviet experience, we begin to see that censorship, no matter how we may feel about it from a moral point of view, is a natural activity for an emergent – or re-emergent – nation. When a nation is in the process of defining or searching for its own identity, and that identity is bound up to an extent in the literature of the day, then censorship becomes a tool to shape the nation. For Katerina Clark, the emphasis on the importance of culture at this time was just that: a tool with which to support the Soviet Union’s ‘greatness’. ‘Central to the drive for greatness was a determination to preside over culture and create a great culture as both backbone of the system and guarantee of that greatness,’ she observes.[5]
Patterson takes this argument further, attributing the growth and development of European literature partially to the existence of censorship: ‘it is to censorship that we in part owe our very concept of “literature”, as a kind of discourse with rules of its own’.[6] In a similar vein, Clark sees the imposition of censorship in the Soviet context as part of the rules of authorship: ‘In the thirties, there was in effect a hierarchy… ranging from mere scribes at the lowest levels through ever higher degrees of authorship, and editorship – including censorship, in this system a version of authorship’.[7] [emphasis added] Clark, like Patterson, seems to depart from a moral judgment about the role of censorship, bypassing questions of whether it is right or not to censor a writers’ work and instead situating the debate within a much wider analysis of the struggle for national identity.
A further point made by Patterson that applies to Soviet censorship is the ambiguity of the written word. Discussing the dynamics of literature as a three-way relationship between the state, the writer and the reader, Patterson traces the development of this ambiguity ‘… from the middle of the sixteenth century in England… a system of communication in which ambiguity becomes a creative and necessary instrument, a social and cultural force of considerable consequence… they [writers] gradually developed codes of communication, partly to protect themselves from hostile and hence dangerous readings of their work, partly in order to be able to say what they had to publically without directly provoking or confronting the authorities.’[8] Patterson herself sees these parallels in the utility of ambiguity between sixteenth century Europe and twentieth century Russia, although unexpectedly she sees scope for comparison in pre-revolutionary rather than post-revolutionary Russia.
She argues: ‘In post-revolutionary Russia, this fruitful battle of wits was effectively ended, not only by greater repressiveness, but also by the codification of communist aesthetics.’[9] Yet on this point, Patterson could not be further from the truth. Ambiguity was hugely present in the work of Soviet writers, a fact that is interestingly illustrated by the publication of a short story, Usomnovshiisia Makar (‘Doubting Makar’), by Andrei Platonov in 1929. Although Platonov had produced two novels around the same time, which the censor had banned, this story had somehow been published in 1929 in the magazine Oktyabr, apparently due to ‘editor’s oversight’[10]. When the story came to Stalin’s attention, he responded by describing it as ‘an ambiguous work’.[11]
The existence of ambiguity was such a worry to those working in Glavlit that even mis-spellings were to be guarded against for fear of misinterpretation – as this document issued to censors in late 1924 makes clear: “In light of repeated distortions of the names of a number of towns on geographic and other maps… I order you to pay close attention to the transcription of town names (particularly Leningrad, Stalingrad, Stalinabad, and so on).”[12]
Soviet censorship, it seems, far from being a top-down process of correction and oversight, was a multi-directional, multi-layered process. In the broadest sense, it may have been influenced by the fact of the Soviet Union being an extremely young country, only thirteen years old at the start of the 1930s. It may have sought to eradicate ambiguity through censorship but this was not always possible. Jan Plamper suggests a definition of censorship as ‘one of many “practices of cultural regulation”’.[13] The Soviet experience of censorship did indeed consist of many different channels of cultural regulation, and was not limited to one formal institution. First let’s examine the institution formally charged with censorship, Glavlit – and then go on to examine the some of the others who engaged with censorship to varying degrees.
[1] Blium, A Self-Administered Poison.
[2] Samantha Sherry, “Censorship in translation in the Soviet Union in the Stalin and Khrushchev eras,” thesis (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 2012), 38.
[3] Sherry, “Censorship in translation,”thesis, 46.
[4] Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 3.
[5] Clark, Moscow: The Fourth Rome, 22-23.
[6] Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation, 4.
[7] Clark, Moscow: The Fourth Rome, 94.
[8] Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation, 10-11.
[9] Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation, 21.
[10] Mirra Ginsburg, “Introduction,” in Andrey Platonov, The Foundation Pit (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1994), viii.
[11] Jan Plamper, “Abolishing ambiguity: Soviet censorship practices in the 1930s,” Russian Review 60, no. 4 (2001): 526:544, 526.
[12] Plamper, “Abolishing ambiguity: Soviet censorship practices in the 1930s,” 533.
[13] Plamper, “Abolishing ambiguity: Soviet censorship practices in the 1930s,” 527.
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