Political Censorship Research Articles

Oportūnists, ļefists, majakovskietis, šāds-tāds inteliģentiņš Linards Laicens PSRS: biogrāfiskais aspekts un „Limitrofija”

The article focuses on the part of Linards Laicen’s (1983–1937) biography marginalised in contemporary literary research – his life in the USSR. In literary studies, the main attention is paid to the writer’s early work; his move to the USSR is seen as a break in his writer’s creative growth, highlighting his obedience to the demands of socialist realism and schematism. The article outlines the most important aspects of Laicens’s biography, trying to construct his potential worldview and find the causal links to his arrival in the USSR. In 1932, Laicens was forced to emigrate to Moscow, where he spent the last five years of his life. Even though the Soviet government had tightened control over the artistic processes, Laicens continued to write according to his aesthetics, risking not only being censored but also politically persecuted. In 1935, Laicen’s last novel, “Limitrofija”, was published. It was written at a time when socialist realism was recognised as the only legitimate direction of art creation in the USSR. The article analyses the circumstances of the novel’s origin, poetics, features of modernism, sources of influence, publishing difficulties, and reception. After analysis of the documents available in the archives, correspondence, notes, publications, as well as the text of the novel itself, it is concluded that Laicens’s location in the USSR is not unambiguous/voluntary, and the novel “Limitrofija” is also part of his modernist and experimental literary contribution. This shows the continuity of Laicens’s creative search, although the USSR is dominated by political censorship and constant control and threats.

Policing Black Film: Racism, Black Resistance and the Applicational Dexterity of Race Relations inBabylon

The racial unrests permeating across Britain in the late 1970s resulted in a set of political agendas responding to racism to be brought into being though legislation, culminating in the passing of the 1976 Race Relations Act. Crucial to such agendas were strategies for the prevention of black urban uprisings against state authority and the politicisation of black youths against racism. The emergence of politicised black British film during the late 1970s offered a crucial counter-hegemonic exploration and re-enactment of an extra-filmic reality of police violence and popular racism within the British body social. However, these texts were subjected to forms of political censorship through a number of state organisations who identified radical black cinema as a political threat with the potential to incite violent responses from black youths. This article will offer a detailed analysis of Babylon (1980) and seeks to investigate the ideological processes leading to its X certification and the moral panic located in its representations of black youths within the crisis of race vis-a-vis the political, social and cultural authority of race relations, situating Babylon’s controversial X certification as an exemplar of the ‘applicational dexterity’ of the race relations discipline.

Диффузионные сети: динамические аспекты сетевой теории и практики

Comparative analysis revealed insufficient representation of the theories of network dynamics in comparison with the theories of network statics, with the exception of the “strategic relational theory of network dynamics” by K. Hay and D. Richards, the actor-network theory of B. Latour and the theory of stochastic processes, on the basis of which most models of network dynamics are built. In comparison with the relational and stochastic approaches, the diffusion direction describing the corresponding type of networks is less represented in the publications. The object of this study is diffusion networks, considered as a communicative element of the process of policy diffusion, that is, a channel for policy dissemination from one policy subject to another. The subject of the study is the political practices of cognitive control in diffusion networks. The methodological basis was the concept of the dynamics of diffusion networks, which allows us to describe the effects of “cognitive limitations” that arise in the Internet. In the development of this topic, it is planned to continue the research in the direction of identifying technologies of cognitive control in diffusion networks based on the manipulation of the cognitive abilities of participants in network relations. The empirical part of the study is aimed at testing the theoretical provisions of the concept of the dynamics of diffusion networks on the example of the practices of network control in the form of political cognitive censorship in the course of digital campaigns. To substantiate the conclusions, we use the big data analysis carried out by monitoring the online network space using the resources of the “Medialogia” and “YouScan” systems. The result was the conceptualization of the concept of “cognitive network control” in relation to diffusion networks, the description of the main dynamic indicator – the speed of dissemination of political information in network communities, and the identification of technologies for cognitive strategic influence in digital practices.

Эпигенез средств массовой информации в Башкирской АССР в 1950–1980-е гг.

Introduction. The article examines the development of Soviet mass media between the 1950s and 1980s through the example of the Bashkir Republic. Goals. The paper seeks to show the mentioned period was characterized by the most consistent and qualitative development of mass media. To facilitate this, the following objectives be tackled: analysis of the gradual development of television, radio and newspapers; identification of differences in the development of mass media; clarification of common features inherent thereto. Materials and Methods. The work analyzes archival materials, and employs methods of historicism, synthesis, alternative, and multidimensional approach to study the problem; the problem-chronological principle proved as instrumental. Results. The paper shows the then difficulties in radio, television and print media, and the measures taken by local party and Soviet authorities to improve the material, technical and personnel aspects, eliminate the problems of ‘feedback from the population’; the latter’s participation in the preparation of programs and publications. The article pays attention to the policy of the Soviet state aimed at supporting the republic’s print media, expanding the network of television and radio broadcasting, in particular, allocation of budget funds for the construction of new relay lines, repair of existing ones, and improvement of the network of service organizations, etc. This resulted in that the whole territory of the republic got covered with mass media networks. It also facilitated broader propaganda and agitation, faster distribution of information about changes at national and regional levels, creation of the illusion those media sources were essentially democratic. The work describes the reform of the media, introduction of new programs, and related changes in political censorship. Scientists, public and party figures, writers, poets — the population — took an active part in the preparation of programs and publications. This increased completeness and distribution levels of the media. However, during this period people still tended to keep an eye on the policy of the Party / state, and censorship of topics was as actual, which made the participation of Bashkir ASSR’s residents in that work somewhat illusory, although it did successfully expand (and strengthen) all ties between an individual — and the republic, city, or factory he / she worked at. The mentioned years witnessed a high demand for discussions over technical innovations, new methods of work, development of social infrastructure and housing, exchange of experiences between the Bashkir ASSR and other Soviet republics. Therefore, in those years, the number of documentaries, radio programs ‘from fields’ and ‘from workshops’ — and readership circulation — significantly increased, new printing agencies were established both in urban and rural areas. Conclusions. The paper concludes that despite all travails and vicissitudes it is in the 1950s – 1980s that mass media achieved their maximum social comprehensiveness and breadth.

Hasty , Olga Peters How Women Must Write: Inventing the Russian Woman Poet (review)

Slavonic and East European Review, 98, 4, 2020 Reviews Hasty, Olga Peters. How Women Must Write: Inventing the Russian Woman Poet. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2020. xiv + 227 pp. Notes. Index. $39.95 (paperback). Olga Peters Hasty’s How Women Must Write: Inventing the Russian Woman Poet is a wonderful gift to all those interested in Russian poetry and women’s studies. Very well researched, it builds productively on its predecessors and adds significantly to the growing number of superb studies of Russian literature, and of women’s writing in particular, from a broadly understood feminist perspective. I have in mind books by Diana Greene, Jehanne Gheith, Stephanie Sandler and Catriona Kelly, to name but a few scholars, as well as Hasty’s own earlier Pushkin’s Tatiana (Madison, WI, 1999), and Tsvetaeva’s Orphic Journeys in the Worlds of the Word (Evanston, IL, 1996). These studies combine questions posed by feminist criticism with a profound attention to the literary tradition they examine and its historical context. Theory and ideology do not overshadow the texts and the persons who created them. This is a general strength of Slavic studies, and of Hasty’s work in particular. Throughout the book, Hasty presents women poets ‘not as passive victims of gender-driven constraints but as purposeful actors negotiating a system rife with disincentives that they turn to advantage’ (p. ix). How Women Must Write offers a series of case studies, incorporating superb close readings of particular poems, which tell several fascinating episodes in the history of ‘inventing the Russian woman poet’. Hasty directs the reader’s gaze to a variety of such ‘inventors’: besides the woman poet herself, they include readers who do not recognize the poet’s subversion of ‘gender biases’; and ‘men who fabricate women poets and their poems’ (p. ix). Hasty’s focus on women as creative subjects, rather than victims, is extremely fruitful and inspiring. The story that Hasty tells, and tells beautifully, spans the Golden and Silver Ages of Russian poetry. It starts with the struggles of the two best-known nineteenth-century women poets, Evdokiia Rostopchina and Karolina Pavlova, who paved the way for the following generations of women; and ends with the triumphs, as well as the tribulations, of the twentieth-century giants, Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva. While Pavlova and Rostopchina succumbed to a rivalry that seems almost inevitable in a literary world inhospitable to women, their twentieth-century heirs managed to build a much more productive and mutually respectful relationship. The book has an elegant palindromic structure: besides an introduction and a conclusion, it consists of three parts of two chapters each. Part one opens with Pavlova and Rostopchina’s polemical poetic exchanges with one another, demonstrating their different strategies in attempting to inscribe themselves into the male-dominated Romantic tradition (ch. 1); and concludes with SEER, 98, 4, OCTOBER 2020 766 Rostopchina’s clever subversion of that ‘male tradition’ (ch. 2). In the middle section of the book, entitled ‘Female Impersonations’, Hasty discusses two literary mystifications which originated ‘in response to male fantasies’ (p. 73): the fictitious poet Cherubina de Gabriak, a joint venture of a real woman poet, Elizaveta Dmitrieva, and her male co-conspirator, Maksimilian Voloshin; and ‘Nelli’, a poet invented entirely by Valerii Briusov. As Hasty shows, both fictions illustrate men’s attempts to control and shape women’s creativity in the Silver Age. Through astute analysis of the poems ostensibly written by ‘Nelli’, Hasty demonstrates that ‘[t]he “new” woman Briusov models in the Nelli poems continues to be sexualized and commodified, only now she is an active participant in this process’ (p. 111). The final part (‘Resistance’) mirrors part one: in an echo of chapter two, chapter five describes Tsvetaeva’s refusal to submit to male authority represented by Briusov; and the last chapter, on Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova’s poetic relationship, ‘responds’ to the first chapter of the book. Hasty combines, to great effect, several theoretical approaches. Besides the feminist attention to the constraints placed on women’s creativity, she incorporates studies of political censorship (Leo Strauss), reader-response theory (Wolfgang Iser) and German mystification theory. She carries her theoretical...

Traces of Dissent: The Journal Filmspiegel and Readership Responses to the Ban of Frank Beyer’s DEFA Film Spur der Steine (1965/66)

The 11th Plenum of the Central Committee of the East German SED, held in December 1965 and resulting in the ban of over a dozen feature films, marks the most ferocious act of political censorship in the history of the state-owned production company DEFA. The ideological agenda behind the decision-making process that led to the official branding of Spur der Steine (Trace of Stones, 1965/66) is well documented, the critical acclaim of the forbidden films has steadily grown after their rediscovery in 1989. Still missing is any deeper insight into the reactions of the cinema-going public to this ruthless intervention of politics into GDR film culture. Based on recently discovered unpublished ‘letters to the editor’ of the journal Filmspiegel concerning the ban of Spur der Steine, this essay sets out to restore a crucial dimension to our understanding of the social reverberations of the 11th Plenum.

Traducir el Martín Fierro, una credencial cultural para Folco Testena

En los intersticios entre literatura y vida, Folco Testena forja su autofiguración de traductor en la introducción al Martín Fierro que preparó para acompañar su primera versión al italiano de la obra de José Hernández. Su relato en primera persona revela lo íntimo a la vez que da cuenta de las coyunturas sociohistóricas que marcaron la labor intelectual desarrollada por los inmigrantes en la cosmopolita Buenos Aires de principios del siglo XX. Traducir el Martín Fierro se presenta, bajo la forma de una historia de autosuperación, como la oportunidad para obtener una credencial cultural en un medio de hostilidad al extranjero y de censura política. El objetivo del presente artículo es poner en circulación un texto de difícil acceso y contribuir a completar el cuadro de la historia de la traducción poniendo en foco a los sujetos sociales que la protagonizan.

Estrategias de censura política cognitiva como efecto de "lo nuevos medios".

El propósito del artículo es el desarrollo y prueba de un modelo explicativo de estrategias peculiares a la censura política cognitiva ejemplificada en la campaña electoral presidencial ucraniana 2018-2019. Los autores amplían y generalizan aspectos objetivos y subjetivos de los enfoques disponibles en la literatura científica a las nuevas formas de censura política. En un aspecto, no solo la capacidad de atención por sí sola se considera como un objeto de censura política cognitiva, sino también otras funciones cognitivas de la audiencia de los medios es la capacidad de formarse una opinión coherente sobre los problemas actuales. Al menos tres estrategias cognitivas de censura política identificadas sugirieron de un debilitamiento de las capacidades cognitivas básicas: distracción, falsificación y absurdo. Estas estrategias se consideran en una perspectiva comparativa con la experiencia de las últimas formas de censura política en China y Turquía.

Дон Kuxom [Don Kikhot]: A Dramatic Adaptation by Bulgakov Mikhail Margarita Marinova Scott Pollard Don Quixote: A Dramatic Adaptation by Bulgakov Mikhail Margarita Marinova (review)

SEER, 98, 1, JANUARY 2020 160 Bulgakov, Mikhail. Дон Кихот [Don Kikhot]: A Dramatic Adaptation. Edited by Margarita Marinova and Scott Pollard. Texts and Translations, 29. The Modern Language Association of America, New York, 2014. xliv + 132 pp. Notes. Selected bibliography. Suggestions for further reading. $13.00: £11.95 (paperback). Bulgakov, Mikhail. Don Quixote: A Dramatic Adaptation. Translated by Margarita Marinova. Texts and Translations, 29. Modern Language Association of America, New York, 2014. lvii + 115 pp. Notes. Selected bibliography. Suggestions for further reading. Note on the translation. $13.00: £11.95 (paperback). Bulgakov completed the first draft of his adaptation of Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote very rapidly, during a rare and very happy holiday in 1938. He had joined his wife Elena in the sleepy town of Lebedian´, Zamiatin’s home town, taking with him a copy of Cervantes in Spanish, dictionaries and a Russian translation. The play had been commissioned from him by the Vakhtangov Theatre in December 1937, as the most devastating year of the Terror drew to a close. Work on the play alternated that summer with the completion of the first full version of The Master and Margarita. Elena described his Don Kikhot as a historical play, alongside his biographical studies of Molière and Pushkin, in which he made use of the past in order to express his own attitude to the modern world. In other words, he took Cervantes’s comic masterpiece, and while celebrating its exuberant, farcical aspects, also invested it with accents which aligned it with his own current preoccupations. Not only is there a melancholic emphasis on the noble failure, the idealist who is frustrated from pursuing his aims by vulgar materialism, but this dreamer is a close relation to the artists in Bulgakov’s portrayals. In Bulgakov’s play Don Quixote eventually recognizes the real world again, and abandons the fantastical ideas he has cherished about Dulcinea and about his chivalric calling. Instead he prepares calmly for the onset of death, almost welcoming its embrace. Readers familiar with Bulgakov’s other male protagonists such as Khludov in Flight, Molière and the Master, will recognize this longing for oblivion and release from the cruelties of the world. The actor Nikolai Cherkasov commented in his memoirs that of all the interpretations of Don Quixote he had performed, Bulgakov’s was the most tragic. Margarita Marinova and Scott Pollard have presented Bulgakov’s work in a pair of volumes, the first containing the text in Russian, the second containing a new translation of the work into English by Marinova. They have drawn upon much of the available scholarship on Bulgakov, including the authoritative eight-volume Azbuka edition of Bulgakov’s works (2011–13). There the editor Viktor Losev proposes to readers a previously unpublished REVIEWS 161 version of the text, which he describes as the third draft of the work, swiftly completed in September 1938. However, Marinova and Pollard have made a choice of source for the Russian text which might seem surprising, using the old 1971 Prideaux Press version, based on the 1960s Soviet edition. Nevertheless — and despite their not going into much detail to account for it — their choice of version seems well justified. The earlier version favoured by Losev is indeed an authentic reflection of Bulgakov’s first polished draft. The later, December 1938 version has lost fifteen pages or so — but this does improve the momentum and tightness of the text, and the cuts seem to have been dictated largely by aesthetic considerations rather than political censorship. Elena herself commented to the theatre that Bulgakov would never have agreed to spoil his own text. The extensive ‘Introduction’ and ‘Notes’ appear in both volumes, slightly adapted in the latter case for an English-reading audience, and offer a history of approaches to Cervantes in Russia, an account of the writing and staging history of Bulgakov’s play and a helpful analysis of Bulgakov’s selective reinterpretation of the characters and themes in Cervantes, as well as a substantial bibliography. There are a few minor inaccuracies about Bulgakov’s biography. The English-language volume contains an additional ‘Note on the Translation’, in which Marinova offers interesting reflections on the specific freedoms...

Political Censorship in Post-Socialist Bulgaria

This article presents how the political changes in Bulgaria after 1989 have infl uenced the interpretation of 20th century history. The emergence of the new censorship is traced through the introduction of a new canon for presenting the past. Three decades ago, Bulgaria began its transition from Soviet-type state socialism to political democracy. For historians, this meant removing political and ideological censorship. Initially, this freedom gave historians the chance to upgrade historical knowledge with hidden facts that were inconvenient for the BCP government. Soon, however, new political parties came to power and began to impose their political version of history. This meant re- moving facts related to the history of the communist movement and anti-fascism in Bulgaria. The attempts at rewriting history are especially visible in the presentation of the socialist period. The political intervention began with the renaming of streets, towns, and institutions. Names associated with the anti-fascist resistance and Russian and Soviet history were removed. Instead, names from the time when Bulgaria was part of the Tripartite Pact were restored. The modern political censorship is most evident in the rewriting of history textbooks. The new curricula introduced a mandatory positive presentation of the history of the Third Bulgarian Kingdom. The actions of the Communists had to be presented as terrorist, and the entire post-war government was defi ned as totalitarian. Instead of socialism, we should use the term “communism”. In 2019, when approving the new history textbooks for high schools, right-wing non-governmental organizations intervened and, as a result, facts about the socio-economic development of the country in the socialist period were removed.

Voices Against Disavowal, Obscurantism, and Exclusion: The Year in Lebanon

Voices Against Disavowal, Obscurantism, and ExclusionThe Year in Lebanon Sleiman El Hajj (bio) Prologue: Dissident Voices in a Bleak Political Landscape Life writing may have been acknowledged as an independent, if interdisciplinary, field in literary criticism in the North American and Anglophone European contexts in the 1990s, but in Lebanon the 1990s marked the end of a protracted civil war (1975–1990), and the country's staggering corpus of postwar literature, in Arabic, French, and English, has been mainly geared toward fiction, rather than nonfiction. Against the backdrop of considerable social and political censorship in Lebanon, real-life accounts have been engineered into fictional prose over the past three decades. Since fiction is not assessed by the same "metrics of authenticity" (Smith and Watson) as nonfiction, fictional texts have provided a heuristic space for self-expression as well as social critique. Lebanese women authors, for example, have folded into their postwar novels "graphic glimpses into the tragic human consequences of violence," and have thus been able to "transcend confessional and political loyalties in order to concentrate almost entirely on the omitted stories of pain and suffering" (Khalaf 13). The repressive political climate that has spawned such narratives continues to date, even if life writing and its subversive voices are now becoming more audible. A number of bitterly contested social media-related arrests of activists, accused of libel against leading politicians and party leaders, were widely criticized as infringements on free speech in 2018 and 2019 (Alami; Azhari). The country was also polarized over indie rock band Mashrou' Leila, which was accused of blasphemy, sedition, homosexuality, and devil worship—not sufficiently evidenced to warrant legal action but enough to galvanize sectarian mass protests. The subsequent threats of violence from Christian right-wing groups led to the cancellation of one of the band's concerts scheduled for August 9, 2019 in Byblos, Lebanon; [End Page 121] what followed was an outcry in international media by Lebanese activists calling for secular freedom and civil rights (Hall; Kayssi). The past year saw a rise in academic as well as public interest in life writing across different modes, namely digital, audiovisual, and onstage narratives, particularly among activists and cultural practitioners interested in the life stories of people who have had traumatic experiences or suffered persecution and stigma, such as refugees, LGBT people, veiled women, atheists, sex workers, gender non-conforming individuals, and prisoners. An atmosphere of growing unrest and discontent, and the relatively long production time for biographies, autobiographies, and other personal narratives in print form, may explain why the latter were not the main vehicles for life writing in Lebanon this year. Life Stories Online: Veiled Atheists from Lebanon and Syria The debate around veiling, whether forced or voluntary, gained renewed traction in 2017 with a dispute in the classroom between a hijab-wearing sophomore student and a retiring professor at the American University of Beirut ("AUB 'Hijab'"). Soon after, Sarah Harakeh, a high school English teacher, published an incendiary personal narrative titled "I Am an Atheist and I Wear the Veil" about how her wearing of the hijab was a collective family decision, rather than an emblem of personal conviction or faith, of which she was devoid after becoming an atheist. One year later, Harakeh published the stories of ten Lebanese and Syrian atheists living in Lebanon. These women had reached out in response to her testimonial and wanted to express their own experiences of physical and mental abuse and their desires to emigrate:1 We took off the black abaya after we left the ISIS-occupied area in Syria, but then my parents made me wear the veil in Lebanon, not taking my opinions or wishes into consideration. […] My views toward religion have changed drastically. […] I wish I can go live one day in a different country, where my choices are protected, where I can be free, and take my veil off. -Samah Despite my age [29] and the fact that I hold a master's degree and I have a job, I still can't take the veil off. I still have to wake up every morning and put the veil on before going out. […] The last time I opened...

Identifying Obstacles to Peace Journalism in Sri Lanka and Nepal

ABSTRACT This study examines the feasibility of practicing Peace Journalism (PJ) in Sri Lanka and Nepal. The conflicts in these two countries highlight the particular nature of contemporary conflict in South Asia—internecine, ethnic and class-based. This study concludes that there is a tremendous need to practice PJ in the post-conflict/conflict societies of these two countries and that there are avenues available to do so, but that these differ from country to country and depend on the nature of the conflicts and the landscape of the media industry in the context of the varying professional, institutional and socio-political and ideological conditions. The media culture of Sri Lanka suggests that it would be more difficult to successfully implement PJ in the country than in Nepal; this is a result of the deep ethnic division that permeates Sri Lankan society and its media. In general terms, the lack of professional training, the nature of media ownership, political censorship and media suppression are all obstacles to the practice of PJ in these two countries.

“Whose Property Are My Letters?” Inside Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunca’s Archive

"Public use of objects belonging to private memory is what concerned me while writing this article. Under discussion will be the collection of letters received by Romanian couple Lovinescu–Ierunca during their more than sixty-year exile in France (1946-2008) from hundreds of fellow intellectuals confined to Romania by the communist regime. The documents belonged to the couple until their death. “Whose property are my letters?” is a question that may now—once the recipients are dead—be raised by any of their surviving correspondents. (The recipient becomes the rightful owner of all the letters he or she receives; but what if the recipient dies without any legal heirs? Who is entitled to the final and legal decision about the fate of those letters?) The politics of memory—issues most germane to public policy—will therefore be the main focus of the first part of my paper. Next, I shall address the special situation of the letters Monica Lovinescu received from her mother, Ecaterina Bălăcioiu-Lovinescu, a fonds which I managed as follows: recovery, selection, translation into Romanian (given the fact that most of them were written in French in order to evade political censorship), publication by Humanitas Publishing House, followed by the transfer of the physical collection to the Humanitas Aqua Forte Foundation. Editing that private correspondence was an occasion for me to fully experience what Arlette Farge (1989) has called “the allure of the archives.” I shall present this experience in detail in the second part of my study."

Political Censorship in the Soviet West

Cette etude est basee sur une comparaison des efforts deployes par l’Union sovietique en matiere de censure politique en Lituanie et en Lettonie entre 1944 et 1989. Elle cherche a repondre aux questions suivantes : la censure politique sovietique etait‑elle appliquee uniformement ou bien existait‑il des variantes regionales ? Les campagnes de censure politique sovietique furent‑elles developpees de la meme facon dans tous les territoires occidentaux nouvellement occupes ? L’article se fonde sur des sources primaires. Dans un premier temps, il propose de comparer les changements de personnel occupant des fonctions quotidiennes de censure dans les antennes locales de Glavlit, les criteres de recrutement et de licenciement des responsables de bureaux, et les relations de ces responsables avec la structure centrale de Glavlit et les responsables locaux du parti communiste. Dans un deuxieme temps, l’article explore les dynamiques de la censure politique appliquee dans les republiques sovietiques de Lituanie et de Lettonie, comparant les relations entretenues avec l’URSS. Enfin, il compare les interventions des republiques en matiere de censure politique et cherche a comprendre si la politique de censure en place dans les republiques baltes se differenciait de celle appliquee dans le reste de l’empire.

German pressure: Spy films and political censorship in Norway, 1914–40

This article explores the relationship between spy films, political censorship and Norwegian foreign policy during the period from 1914 to 1940. Espionage was a popular topic in Norway during this era, both in the news media and as a theme in fictional dramas. Based on a survey of the vetting of 57 spy films, both silent and sound, by the state censorship board, the article focuses on the Norwegian government’s hidden role in political film censorship throughout the period. While Norway’s Constitution and film censorship statutes provided no legal foundation for political censorship, there is nonetheless ample evidence that it took place. The article concludes with an in-depth analysis of the process of banning the US film Confessions of a Nazi Spy in July 1939, the German involvement in that process, and the subsequent effort to change the censorship law to reflect what was happening in practice.

From Escapism to Propaganda: Hungarian Cinema in the Age of Growing Anti-Semitism, Nationalism, and World War II. Review Article of Frey, David. 2018. Jews, Nazis and the Cinema of Hungary: The Tragedy of Success, 1929-44 London, New York: I.B. Tauris. 462 pp. illus. and Gergely, Gábor. 2018. Hungarian Film 1929-1947: National Identity, Anti-Semitism, and Popular Cinema. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

The article reviews recent scholarship on Hungarian cinema in the age of rising nationalism, anti-Semitism and World War II. It looks at two books specifically as they examine issues such as the film industry’s transition from silent to sound film, the nationalization of the film industry system, the impact of anti-Jewish legislation on film making, and political censorship. The article also considers how the books address genre and the birth of star system in Hungarian film.

Средства связи как инструмент политической цензуры в CCCР (1970-е - начало 1980-х гг.)

Средства связи как инструмент политической цензуры в CCCР (1970-е - начало 1980-х гг.)

Ultimul Blaga

Abstract This paper aims to reveal Lucian Blaga’s ethical status and literary existence in a tormented period generated by the dawn of the new communist social transformations. The fictional perspective, as reflected in the autobiographical novel Luntrea lui Caron, is enriched by the confessions of the contemporaries. The struggle between principles, values and political censorship imposed by the historical context is portrayed thoroughly by the above mentioned sources. The poet is not the defeated intellectual that would be the perfect victim of totalitarianism. He remains a symbol of a consciousness that can not be perverted. Blaga will not betray his philosophical system nor his moral beliefs.

Tracing the shadows of Occupation: memory as ‘screen’ in La Dénonciation (1962) and Tu ne tueras point (1961/1963)

ABSTRACT Despite ravaging the minds of a generation of young French men threatened with the prospect of death-in-combat, the Algerian War—which tore through the landscape of French colonial Algeria from 1954 to 1962—has consistently been described as a ‘forgotten’ conflict, which left precious little trace of its trauma in the vectors of metropolitan, collective memory. Typically, scholars have tended to conceptualise this amnesia as a symptom of three main factors: political hagiography (see, for example, the work of Henry Rousso), modernisation (Kristin Ross), and censorship (Benjamin Stora). This article does not aim to challenge the elemental premise upon which this scholarship is founded—that the Algerian War was indeed forgotten by large swathes of French society—but rather dilates the scope of this inquiry in order to include an ambivalent obsession with the Second World War that arose at precisely the point at which Algerian nationalists began to stake their claim for independence. In the first part of this article, we will therefore explore how this obsession manifests itself in the sublimated landscape of Jacques Doniol-Valcroze’s La Dénonciation (1962), before shifting our attention to Claude Autant-Lara’s mystifying portrayal of post-World War Two pacifism, Tu ne tueras point (1961/1963).

The Alternative Public Sphere in China: a Cultural Sociology of the 2008 Tainted Baby Milk Scandal

This article studies critical news reports about the 2008 Chinese tainted baby milk scandal, which the World Health Organization identified as one of the largest food safety crises in recent years. Examining the discursive practices adopted to legitimize journalistic criticism in authoritarian China, it reveals that critical-minded journalists avoid criticizing the state during the period of heavy censorship, preferring instead to target local governments. Journalists develop more explicit criticisms of the state as censorship becomes loosened, but they continue to rely on the strategic use of official statement and a heavy dose of praise to appear complimentary. Findings indicate that while critical journalism is constrained by political censorship, the Chinese critical press has managed to circulate counter-hegemonic interpretations of the scandal through strategic discursive practices.