Soviet censorship

Soviet censorship was state control over published, performed, and broadcast expression in the Soviet Union, enforced through prior review, punishment, and control of cultural institutions.

Goskino: The Soviet state committee that supervised film production and distribution. Its control over scripts, studios, and releases extended censorship to cinema.
Bolshevik Revolution: The 1917 revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power in Russia. The new regime began dismantling independent media and restricting political opposition.
Andrei Zhdanov: A Soviet Communist Party official who directed cultural policy after World War II. His 1946 campaign against writers and artists defined a major postwar tightening.
Doctor Zhivago: Boris Pasternak’s novel, first published abroad in 1957 after Soviet publishers rejected it. Its foreign publication and 1958 Nobel Prize triggered a major censorship controversy.
Samizdat: The clandestine circulation of texts copied and distributed outside official publishing channels. Restrictions on legal publication drove readers and writers to create informal networks.
Main Directorate for Literature and Publishing: The Soviet government body that regulated publishing and printing. Its authority over publishers and print runs made literary approval enforceable.
Decree on the Press: A 1917 Bolshevik decree that authorized the closure of publications opposing the new government. It established an early legal justification for suppressing hostile newspapers.
Mikhail Suslov: A senior Soviet Communist Party ideologue who oversaw ideological policy for decades. He helped sustain Party supervision of literature, art, and public thought.
The Master and Margarita: Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, published in the Soviet Union in censored form in 1966–67. Its delayed, cut publication illustrates how a work could appear only after extensive restriction.
Tamizdat: The publication abroad of works that could not be published legally in the Soviet Union. Writers used foreign presses to reach audiences beyond domestic censorship.

Linked from 57 pages