One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich | Historical Context
Censorship in Russian Literature
The history of Russian literature has been one of censorship, first under the czars and then under the Soviets. In the 19th century, the poet Pushkin, the novelists Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoyevski, and the dramatists Gogol and Chekhov, to name a few, elevated Russian literature to world renown, but these writers labored under the threat of exile, imprisonment, or death if their works were deemed politically unacceptable. Pushkin was exiled for a time. Dostoyevski had a crueler experience: he was condemned to the firing squad before the czar's...
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