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Censorship was a widespread practice in much of the 20th century even across democratic regimes in the world. However, the scale of censorship, its extent, its systematic nature, and the grave repercussions experienced for not obeying its rules turned it into a key instrument for maintaining political power under Communism. "Double speech" was its alpha and omega. Communist regimes often employed leftist humanitarian vocabulary to veil and even justify institutionalized state-level repression that was, in turn, not allowed to be criticized, or only to a very limited extent. Citizens were forced to code their critical messages and developed practices of self-censorship to avoid harassment. The objective of this module is to introduce students to such practices, and make them aware how the level of censorship varied in the different countries and decades. By digging into the COURAGE Registry, students will discover a variety of strategies to circumvent state censorship.

Handbook

Video

Readings

Compulsory

Pszenicki, C. (1979). ‘The Flying University.’ Index on Censorship, 8(6), 19–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/03064227908532993
Šmejkalová, J. (2001). Censors and Their Readers: Selling, Silencing, and Reading Czech Books. Libraries & Culture, 36(1,), 87–103. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25548893
Jones, S. (2011). Introduction. In Complicity, Censorship and Criticism: Negotiating Space in the GDR Literary Sphere (pp. 1–31). Berlin: De Gruyter.
Darnton, R. (2014). Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature. London: The British Library.
Darnton, R. (1995). Censorship, a Comparative View: France, 1789-East Germany, 1989. Representations, (49), 40–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928748
Boyer, D. (2003). Censorship as a Vocation: The Institutions, Practices, and Cultural Logic of Media Control in the German Democratic Republic. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45(03). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417503000240

Recommended

Šmejkalová, J. (2001). Censors and Their Readers: Selling, Silencing, and Reading Czech Books. Libraries & Culture, 36(1,), 87–103. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25548893
Jones, S. (2011). Complicity, Censorship and Criticism: Negotiating Space in the GDR Literary Sphere. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Janáček, P. (2018). From Literature Censored by Poets to Literature Censored by the Party: Censorship in the Czech Literary Culture of 1945–55. In E. Dobrenko & N. Jonsson-Skradol (Eds.), Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures under Stalin: Institutions, Dynamics, Discourses (pp. 61–70). London: Anthem Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2050vm2.8
Darnton, R. (2014). Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature. London: The British Library.
Burt, R., & Social Text Collective (Eds.). (1994). The administration of aesthetics: censorship, political criticism, and the public sphere. Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota Press.
Darnton, R. (1995). Censorship, a Comparative View: France, 1789-East Germany, 1989. Representations, (49), 40–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928748

Related Collections from COURAGE Registry (selection)

Encyclopedia

From COURAGE Registry (selection)

External Links

Further Sources

Index on Censorship magazine

Assignments

In-class or short-term assignments

1) Browse the recommended items from the COURAGE Registry and consult the assigned readings: make a list of keywords of Party-defined "ideological fallacies" that were not tolerated by censorship. Discuss their meaning in class!

2) Find a film and a literary work that were banned or censored in a country in Eastern Europe under Communism. (Items included in the COURAGE Registry do not count.) Why were these censored?

3) Collaborate with your classmates in small groups of 3-4: try to map the institutions responsible for censorship in Communist Eastern Europe. Compare the lists you made in class and discuss how those institutions contributed to censorship.

Offsite, longer-term assignments

Run a filtered search in the COURAGE Registry, and identify archives relevant to the topic of censorship in your geographic area. If these are too far away to visit, consult with your professor and local librarians to find out where such materials could be located that you are able to access. What sort of collections could you identify? When was the collection established, by whom, and why? Are there any similarities with the provenance of the Eastern European collections included in the COURAGE Registry?

Discussion

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