Temporary Rules

21 November 1905: Press Censorship Ends?

Here every article is put through
A doubly lethal ritual;
Like Orthodox, they’re blessed with crosses,
And like the Jews, they’re circumcised.

Здесь над статьями совершают
Вдвойне убийственный обряд;
Как православных – их крестят,
И как евреев – обрезают.

This epigram by Dmitry Minayev was written in 1873, eight years after enactment of the Temporary Rules that for the first (but not last) time supposedly abolished censorship in Russia.

Censorship is an aspect of Russia that – no matter how many times it is abolished, liberalized, and reformed – keeps coming back to life, just like a fairy-tale dragon. Even before the word “censorship” entered the Russian lexicon, the dragon was already breathing fire here.

Peter the Great (ruled 1682-1721) liked to check all books himself, and he was able to do this thanks to his voracious curiosity and desire to be in total control, not to mention the fact that few books were being produced back then. His daughter, Empress Elizabeth (1741-1762), did not inherit her father’s love of reading and preferred to assign the important job of screening literature to the Holy Synod.

A few years after Elizabeth left the scene, Catherine the Great (1762-1796) took an interest in Age of Enlightenment ideas and encouraged the publication of newspapers and books – at least until the French Revolution. The very thought that the sort of freethinking that had inspired events in France could find its way to Russia terrified her. In 1790, after Alexander Radishchev condemned serfdom in his Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, the empress labeled him a “rebel worse than Pugachyov.” Radishchev was promptly condemned to death, a verdict later commuted to ten years of Siberian exile. Soon afterward, in 1792, Nikolai Novikov, whose publishing enterprises were responsible for a huge proportion of everything printed in eighteenth-century Russia, came under suspicion of involvement in Freemasonry and was imprisoned in the notorious Shlisselburg Fortress outside St. Petersburg.

Although Catherine’s son, Paul I (1754-1801), generally avoided emulating his mother, he made an exception when it came to censorship. He was not about to allow free access to books and periodicals from a Europe ablaze with revolution.

Alexander I (1801-1825) enacted a censorship law during his reign that might even have made life easier for writers and publishers, since specific limits were placed on censors. (This is one reason Alexander was considered a liberal. Back then, it did not occur to anyone to question whether it was right to put all works through a screening process before they could be published.)

When Nicholas I (1825-1855) informed Pushkin that he, personally, would serve as the poet’s censor, he probably truly believed he was doing him a favor. In fact he was putting him in a terrible position: trying to pull the wool over the tsar’s eyes was close to a treasonous act, and you could hardly tell him that his interpretation of your poem was wrong.

And writers certainly did try to pull the wool over the censors’ eyes, and sometimes they succeeded. Writers and censors alike remembered what happened in 1836, when Nikolai Nadezhdin, editor of the journal Telescope, somehow managed to convince the censor Alexei Boldyrev to let through Pyotr Chaadayev’s “Philosophical Letters.” There was no way that this scathing commentary on Russia’s place in the world fell within whatever guidelines censors were given in the Russia of Nicholas I – and yet it was published. Alexander Herzen, recalling the shock he experienced when he first set eyes on the “Letters,” described them as a “shot in the night.” The government responded swiftly. The censor was fired and the journal’s publisher was exiled to the remote northern town of Ust-Sysolsk (modern Syktyvkar).

As the nineteenth century progressed, Russian writers and journalists became increasingly skilled in the art of Aesopian language. When Chernyshevsky wrote about the emancipation of slaves in the United States, his readers knew that he was really commenting on the situation of the Russian peasants. Strictly speaking, however, no censorship rules had been violated.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, a clear pattern was emerging. As soon as a Western European power began to be threatened by revolution, censorship in Russia became more stringent. Such was the case after the French Revolution of 1789-1799 and after the upheavals of 1848. Nicholas I, who was horrified by reports of revolution in Europe, almost completely cut off the flow of Western books and newspapers to Russia, tightened censorship, and created a special committee to keep an eye on the censors themselves!

The era of reform instituted by Alexander II (1855-1881) brought about a relaxation of censorship. The Temporary Rules enacted in 1865 meant that works could be published without screening by censors – but if anti-government ideas did make their way into print, there were consequences. The dragon was dozing, but he was still there. A liberal journal like The Contemporary – publisher of such iconic works as Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done? (written under the watchful eyes of guards while the writer was imprisoned in the Fortress of St. Peter and Paul) – might manage to publish progressive voices, but not for long. In the years that followed, many liberal journals, including The Contemporary, were shut down by the authorities.

After Alexander II was assassinated, his son and successor, Alexander III, operated under the assumption that his father’s permissiveness and reforms were what had enabled the terrorists to commit their dastardly crime. Over the course of his thirteen-year reign, Alexander III (1881-1894) gradually rolled back his father’s reforms in all areas, including censorship. The dragon came roaring back to life. Rather than gradually being abolished as their name seemed to promise, the Temporary Rules were greatly expanded, giving the authorities tighter control over the press. Pre-publication screening was not formally reintroduced, but it was once again a reality.

Then came the revolution of 1905. Nicholas II (1894-1917), Alexander’s successor, was infuriated by the liberties the press was taking. And not just the press. Demonstrations and strikes were held with ever greater frequency. On October 17 a royal manifesto was issued promising the Russian people a Legislative Duma and political freedoms, including freedom of speech.

By now, the press had been disregarding the censorship dragon’s fiery breath for almost a year, and the manifesto seemed to confirm that a time of total freedom had arrived. Newspapers were even emboldened to depict the autocracy as a crown-wearing skeleton. Readers devoured articles about demonstrations and armed marchers. But this newfound press freedom had not been codified in law.

Then, on November 24, censorship was (once again) officially abolished, or rather a new set of “temporary rules” were enacted, this time rules specifically governing periodicals. Once again, the requirement to submit writing for pre-publication review by the censors was repealed. Furthermore, it was no longer illegal to publish something “incorrect” (a term that had been used to refer to disloyalty to the government rather than inaccuracy). True, these new rules did not apply in areas under a state of emergency, and states of emergency were no rarity. But, in theory, long awaited freedom had finally arrived.

Apparently, some worried that these temporary rules really would prove to be temporary. In the spring of 1906, when the First State Duma convened, a group of legislators introduced a bill on the press. It began with the words, “The press is free. Censorship is abolished unconditionally and permanently.”

The bill was not passed; the Duma itself was abolished.

In the liberal atmosphere that followed 1905, the renowned literary historian Pavel Shchyogolev began to publish the journal Byloye (The Past), which was largely devoted to the history of Russia’s revolutionary movements. At first the government reconciled itself to the journal’s inclusion of memoirs by terrorists and rebels and stories about the stormy 1860s and 1870s. But in 1909, when Shchyogolev dared to publish an article about the recently-exposed double agent Yevno Azef, hitting a bit close to home for the tsarist secret police, the dragon was enraged. The situation in the country had calmed down and the powers that be had no desire to stir things up. Shchyogolev wound up spending three years in the Fortress of Peter and Paul.

Overall, it has to be admitted that censorship during the final years of the tsarist regime was not so bad. The dragon was not as fierce as it had once been, but every now and then it did raise its fearsome head.

One such time came with the outbreak of World War I, which heralded a period of stringent military censorship. This was brought to an end by the February Revolution, which abolished censorship entirely. Just a few months later came the Bolsheviks, and one of their first acts was the decree “On the Press,” which shut down all publications that failed to extol the new government. For many decades to follow, the dragon was not to be trifled with. There were times when it was kinder and gentler, as in the mid-1920s, but then in the 1930s and 1940s writers had to choose their words carefully. Khrushchev and the Thaw brought a period of liberalization, but under Brezhnev control was again tightened, especially after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Perestroika was an era that basically unfolded on the pages of newspapers and magazines. Under glasnost, the dragon still officially existed, but it gradually and sheepishly retreated to its cave, threatened by an army of brave knights. Finally, in 1990, a new and marvelous “Law on the Press” was passed, abolishing censorship.

This law did not include the word “temporary,” and for a while people believed that freedom of speech was here to stay.

Today there is no censorship in Russia. Officially. But if the dragon has been slain, where have the independent media gone?

In fact, we all know that the dragon is stronger than ever. But if the patterns of Russian history hold true, it is only a matter of time before it weakens again, at least temporarily.