The Soviet Union
A project on Censorship By: Mary
Bryan and Gabbie Fox
What is censorship?
cen·sor·ship (snsr-shp) n.
1. The act, process, or practice of censoring.
2. The office or authority of a Roman censor.
3. Psychology Prevention of disturbing or painful thoughts or feelings
from reaching consciousness except in a disguised form.
cen⋅sor⋅ship
/ˈs ɛnsərˈ ʃɪp/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [sen-ser-ship]
Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun 1. the act or practice of censoring. 2. the office or
power of a censor. 3. the time during which a censor holds
office. 4. the inhibiting and distorting activity of the Freudian
censor.
Types of Censorship
Moral This type of censorship refers to issues in which moral issues are contained. Those in charge of
censoring the material may find questionable content that they do not wish their audiences to
observe, and would wish to withold those sorts of ideas. An example of such would be
pornography or nudity in film.
Military The act of military censorship is to withold tactics and national information from other
nations and enemies. Another way that the military is censored is by preventing disturbing
images or videos of war time scenarios available to the public.
Political This occurs when the government needs to keep secrets from its civilians in order to prevent
an uprising or disruption. Democracies such as ours are not too approving of this type of
censorship, but have been seen to show it in the past. An example of this could be the Watergate
scandal, which was witheld from public view in order to prevent the demoralization of the
government, and provide a "weakness" for enemies to exploit.
Religious This is shown when one religion sees questionable material and has it removed. It is often
used by one religion to make another seem of a lesser value, as a form of competition. One
religion may dissaprove of the ideas of another religion in order to be more accurate with their
specific faith.
Corporate This occurs when a corporation sees that material that is unfitting to them or their
business partners. It is a good tactic in keeping their reputation respectable. Also, in light of the
news, the business may wish to keep certain information private, in order to increase the
customer numbers.
The U.S.S.R
• The Union of Soviet of Socialist Republic
• Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia,
Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia,
Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
• Founded in 1924 and Ended in 1991
Glavlit
In 1922,Glavlit was established, also the Office for Russian
Censorship. Its purpose was to get rid of all works regarded
to be against the new order and to corrupt the minds of
Russian people. The Glavlit had absolute authority to
oversee the performing arts and all books and magazines
prevent any breaks in the publishing laws.
Glavlit censored works not only in the USSR, but in all Soviet
controlled countries.
What do the people think of this?
1. If you are wondering what the people of these countries think of
this, they don’t. They don’t “think” at all. The press and Glavlit keep
everything out of the people’s knowledge. They don’t know of the
politics. They don’t know of the conflicts. Everything is kept from
them so that they don’t have a chance of overthrowing the
government.
2. Relate this to “Fahrenheit 451”. Guy knows nothing until Clarisse
provokes him into that awful thing called curiosity. The government
didn’t want him to know did they?
Example of Censored Pictures
Stalin with Nikolai
Yezhov.
Stalin with Yezhov
removed.