Dec 26, 2009

The Government Inspector | Historical Context

Censorship
Under the reign of Tsar Nicholas I, Russian writers suffered extremely strict censorship of all written material. In 1826, a statute on censorship, according to Beresford, ‘‘prohibited the publication of any matter that was deemed to disparage the monarchy or the church or which criticized, even indirectly, the existing order of society.’’ The years 1848-1855, particularly, were referred to as ‘‘the age of terror by censorship.’’ Brown describes the crushing power of these censorship practices on Russian society: ‘‘Penalties...