I’ll say right away: I am for censorship. You will think that this is a paradox - how can a journalist speak out against freedom of speech? But freedom is different from freedom, and censorship is also different from censorship.
“It is impossible to live in society and be free from society” - this is what Grandfather Lenin said. And no one disputes his correctness. He was a wise man. That, however, did not stop him from committing contradictory actions. Sometimes tragic - that still resonate today and, perhaps, will continue to resonate for decades. But that's not what we're talking about.
A person must limit himself; permissiveness is unacceptable. If he does not do this himself, state or public institutions do it for him. And this is censorship in the broad sense of the word.
It is worth saying that works of art, as well as the media, play a significant role in determining the motives of human behavior. With the help of these two most important factors, you can sometimes completely change a person’s worldview, especially an unstable one.
Censorship exists in any state, and it is perhaps the main instrument for maintaining power in general. Another thing is what the extent of these restrictions is and what they want to achieve with their help.
The presidential race that ended recently in the United States clearly showed how the authorities of this “cradle of democracy” know how to manipulate the media. By all indications, explicit and implicit, thanks to a massive information campaign, Hillary Clinton should have won. The most interesting thing is that the whole world thought so, not only ordinary citizens, but also heads of state. Therefore, Donald Trump’s victory came as a shock to many. And this is not because Trump is so-and-so - the expectations were simply too different.
Thus, the US authorities launched the propaganda machine with all their might and let through not only inside the country, but also outside only that information that was pleasing to the current Obama administration and everyone who stands behind this administration.
Despite this pressure, Trump won by such a landslide (more than 25 percent) that no one even dared argue. And if not for censorship, then, apparently, Trump would have inflicted a crushing defeat on the Democrats.
Why am I talking about this, you ask? Are there not enough problems of your own? No, not a little. It’s just that before you shout about the authoritarianism of the Russian government and nod at Western democracy, it’s worth remembering at least this past election campaign in the United States.
Of course, we have a different mentality, different values, and different prohibitions. But I want to say this. Any state seeking to preserve itself as such is simply obliged to use such a method of limiting dissent as censorship. The state is always a mechanism of suppression, an apparatus of violence against citizens, protecting the peace of some from the desire for permissiveness and destruction of the foundations of the system by others. Here I do not mean the extreme confrontation between the authorities and ordinary citizens - the state most often has to protect people from other people.
If there is no implementation of laws, there will be no state. And the weakness of our state is not in the weakness of the economy, but in the non-compliance with the laws. If everyone were punished for crimes, regardless of personality and position, there would be more respect for the state, and the treasury would be bursting with income. Otherwise, only some people's pockets are bursting...
It is worth saying that in Russia there was almost always censorship, and even such great people as Derzhavin, Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Mayakovsky, Bulgakov, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Brodsky and others fell under its millstone.
But here’s a paradox: the stricter the censorship, the more great names and great works there are. Sometimes it seems to me that something meaningful and truly great can only be born from opposition. But give a person freedom - and he will soon become bored with everything.
I remember, also great, Vissarion Grigorievich Belinsky said: “Struggle is a condition of life, life dies when the struggle ends.” We will not talk about the broad and, in general, universal sense of this phrase - we will only dwell on opposition to the existing foundations of representatives of literature, art and journalism.
Over the course of several centuries of censorship in Russia, hundreds of outstanding names and hundreds of great works appeared. And after censorship almost disappeared in the 90s of the last century and until today, where are those writers, poets, artists, composers? Of course, they exist, but they no longer have the same influence on the hearts and souls of readers and viewers. Allowed mass freedom has robbed us of our greatness of spirit.
A few days ago, the series “Mysterious Passion” about the sixties was shown on TV. Undoubtedly, this is a great cultural event, but not because famous actors play it, and they play it well (it is worth saying that many current series are distinguished by a fairly high level of artistry and acting), but mainly because of the theme and nostalgia for those years.
The great era of the sixties is simply passing away, leaving irrevocably along with its representatives, of whom only Yevgeny Yevtushenko remains alive, and even he is already too many years old. Rather, the series is a requiem for a bygone time and culture.
After the sixties and the great authors, their peers, there was no longer any great literature in Russia. You can, of course, name a couple of names - such as, for example, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Denis Gutsko or Dmitry Bykov, but, unfortunately, few people know them now. And it’s not because they write badly, it’s just that readers and Russians in general have become lost in this sudden surge of freedom. You can watch any films, listen to any programs, read any works. Social life and public culture actually ceased to exist - individualized consciousness came to replace it. This may be good, but many standards, including moral ones, are being eroded. Therefore, Soviet censorship was, of course, a blessing in this regard.
If we talk about censorship in a more familiar sense to us, then it exists in the person of Roskomnadzor, which is authorized to fine media outlets, limit access to them, and deprive them of their licenses. For example, propaganda of extremism and terrorism, obvious slander, attacks against the foundations of the existing system and other “offences” are punished in the most cruel way - not only by closing the media, but also by real prison terms for journalists.
A couple of weeks ago, for example, the famous blogger and journalist Don Sergei Reznik was released from the colony. He spent several years in prison, and now he has been excommunicated from public journalism for several more years. I did not follow the specific reason for Reznik’s “imprisonment,” but his public attacks against many people and officials in the Rostov region, most often representatives of government at various levels, not only had no basis (it is the prerogative of the court to establish the guilt of one or another another person), but were presented in a clearly offensive manner. What is unacceptable for a journalist and what actually broke his fate.
Alexander Tolmachev, the former editor of the Rostov newspaper “Authorized to Declare,” is still in prison. They say it's for extortion. What I don’t know, I don’t know, I won’t say. But the court had some grounds for making this decision! Well, I can’t believe that these days, just like that, they imprison a public person!
Journalist Dmitry Remizov also came under investigation several times; it seems he now works in the regional branch of Rosbalt. I do not undertake to judge the reality of the reasons for the persecution, since law enforcement officers and the journalist have different versions.
In general, most journalists, especially those who work in municipal media, of course, have well-developed self-censorship. If, of course, you dig around, a talented journalist can always find nasty things that he can not only write about, but also greatly inflate them to incredible proportions. But why? Here the newspapermen are not so much afraid for their fate as they are based on the position of expediency: in order for power to be effective, it must be supported, and not undermined. And if there is a person in power who is worried about the fate of a village, city, district, region, country, journalists are simply obliged to provide him with all possible support. Well, if he’s a rogue, then the journalists won’t let him down!
So, there must be censorship on the part of the state, which protects its foundations from destruction, and self-censorship. After all, if you give yourself free rein, you can come to an agreement! Someone, by the way, is fully aware of the limits of permissibility and sometimes balances it very skillfully, which is why they not only achieve their goals, but also produce a high-quality information product. Others go ahead and often find themselves removed not only from the profession, but also from society.
But there is another type of censorship – religious. Moreover, it is individualistic-religious. This is the most terrible censorship, because not only the conviction, but also the degree of punishment depends on the interpretation.
Some time ago, a controversy broke out over Alexei Uchitel's next film, Matilda. The film itself has not yet been released, even the director has not edited it, but “Matilda” has already received a barrage of criticism.
The film is based on the story of the relationship between Nicholas II and Matilda Kshesinskaya. The fact that Tsarevich Nicholas fell in love with a ballerina in 1892-1894 is not disputed by anyone, and the relationship continued only until the engagement of the future emperor to Alice of Hesse (future Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna). We don’t really know how the director interpreted this relationship – we can only guess from the trailer. But there has already been an extensive campaign against the film itself. So much so that deputy Natalya Poklonskaya made a request to the Prosecutor General's Office regarding the verification of a film that has not yet been released (!).
The reason is an insult to the feelings of believers. The first insult is that Nicholas, who was recently canonized for his martyrdom, should not have been shown in such an unsightly light. And the second reason is that the director gave the role of the Russian saint to the German actor Lars Eidinger, who recently appeared in a pornographic film.
In this regard, Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev wisely spoke out, who commented on the requests of some Orthodox activists to ban the film “Matilda”. According to him, the main problem is that the search for a reason for personal insult has already formed a trend.
“This fashion of looking for a reason to be offended is already bordering on psychiatric insanity,” complains the archdeacon. – When there is an attitude, like, let’s find something to be offended by, then the bullet will find a hole. I can’t imagine what would have happened to the apostles of Christ if they had walked around the Roman Empire in such a mood. They would never leave court hearings, and even there they would have time to be offended by the sight of naked statues.”
Kuraev admits that someone may actually have been offended by the film “Matilda,” but even in this case they have a simple way out: do not watch this film and pray.
“The most important thing is not to decide for other people that someone else should be insulted in the same way as me,” explains Andrei Kuraev. “And then this feeling can be poured into prayer, and not into a police lawsuit.”
This is precisely where the main danger of this kind of censorship lies - to decide for other people.
Recently I watched a rather talented film by our fellow countryman, Rostovite Kirill Serebrennikov, who now lives in Moscow and runs the former theater named after. N.V. Gogol, and now – the Gogol Center. This is the movie "The Apprentice". In May, he was even awarded one of the prizes at the Cannes Film Festival.
As for me, the picture, no matter how talented, is just as Russophobic, as well as anti-Orthodox. It would be just right to be offended by her. It’s just that, apparently, few people watched it in Russia. But that's not the point. The main thing in the film is the image of the hero, which shows the danger of religious fanaticism.
A high school student named Benjamin became intoxicated with the Word of the Bible and rejected his family, teachers, and classmates. In the story, a teenager becomes a religious fanatic and comes into conflict with a biology teacher at his school.
And the interpretation of the Word of God leads the teenager to the point that he is already going to kill, in the name of the Lord he decides who will live and who will die - for His glory.
This is the most terrible type of censorship – censorship of life. And religious fanaticism, be it Christian, Islamic, Buddhist or otherwise, today comes to the surface and begins to decide the destinies of entire nations.
Today, extremists of all extremes are killing what they themselves believe they serve, betraying the original purpose of religious texts. They take upon themselves the responsibility to speak on behalf of God...
Igor Severny, “Week of our region”
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We have collected seven quotes from interviews with various Russian intellectuals (writers, translators, journalists, etc.) about modern censorship. Based on their words, censorship, although it exists, is not in the form of scary committees from the USSR, but in the form of strange, stupid restrictions, numerous unspoken rules and the habit of self-censorship. What do you think?
About censorship in children's literature
In Soviet times, of course, there was censorship. It was getting ridiculous. I worked at Detgiz for several years, and everything in children’s literature was eliminated: p O py, not to mention asses or some things related to anatomy, sexuality - this should not have happened at all.
Many writers simply could not be published, and not even because they said something anti-Soviet in their works, but because, God forbid, we translate the book of such a well-intentioned and even communist writer, prepare it for publication, and then suddenly once - and condemn the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia. The censorship was endless.
Then all this censorship collapsed, and thank God. And now... The wheel of our political reality is rolling in the opposite direction, the horses have gone unstoppable, we are sitting in a carriage, and what happens along the way does not happen rationally, but as symptoms of a disease.
Everything comes back, and censorship too - sanctimonious, hypocritical, useless to anyone.
It started again with children's books. It is curious that the first conquest of uncensored children's literature was precisely the O hey, the kids were allowed to wipe themselves and fart. And now we are back again to the fact that children are forbidden to take off their pants.
The persecution began with a harmless little book from the Samokat publishing house, where that unfortunate word “ass” seemed to be written on the fence. This served as a trigger, parent committees appeared to protect children's morality. And then age restrictions began - 18+, 12+, forcing children's publishers to come up with incredible monograms.
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It would seem that we agreed that there are different people - heterosexual, homosexual, and that we can all give dozens of examples of favorite writers who were both like this and like that. When the Iron Curtain collapsed, some previously forbidden topics opened up both in translation and in literature.
But now everything has gone in the opposite direction. At first, the very mention of homosexual love is excluded from children's books. Everyone flocked to Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s children’s series about different families, where they dared to say that such a thing even happens in the world. And then on the rise.
About censorship in adult literature
Lyudmila Ulitskaya
writer
[Censorship] exists, especially in audiovisual media, where it is harsh and stupid. But literature is something else. I have never changed a single word in my books due to censorship... Until recently. In recent years, a law aimed at “purifying” the Russian language prohibits the use of obscenities. So in one of my latest novels, I agreed to replace the word “slut” with “slut.”
[I was asked to do this] by my publisher, with whom I have worked for twenty years and whom I respect very much. She was afraid that because of this one word my novel might be put on the list of banned books, at least for those under 18, and wrapped in cellophane, like porn books!
Overall, this was a precaution because there is no official list of banned words, and in any case it is unknown to the general public. The situation is a little similar to the one in the USSR, when we knew that some books were banned, but did not know exactly which ones.
About censorship at school
Dmitry Bykov
writer, journalist
It makes no sense to protect a modern child from anything - they all navigate the Internet better than you and me.
And experience shows that if a teacher does not recommend something - or, God forbid, prohibits it - this is the surest way to draw attention to the forbidden fruit.
I have been convinced of this many times: no matter how much you scold Rozanov or urge him to read Nietzsche with extreme caution, within a week the whole class is talking in their aphorisms.
About censorship in journalism
Vladimir Pozner
journalist, TV presenter
The profession [of journalism] is being destroyed with the consent of many of its representatives, who, instead of resisting, are taking an active part in this. It's no secret that the level of unspoken censorship today is unusually high and information is carefully controlled.
The degree of freedom of speech directly depends on the size of the audience: the larger it is, the less opportunity to say what you consider necessary. If it is very small, then freedom of speech exists in full. Only it applies to three people, which means it’s worthless.
Today's censorship is much more complicated than what it was in Soviet times, where any material passed through two conventional seals - “possible” and “not allowed.” Now the boundaries of what is permitted and what is not permitted are blurred.
The degree of risks has also changed: under the Union you could be imprisoned and even shot, today you could be fired, although for many employees of federal channels this is a serious consequence due to high salaries.
About censorship in the theater
Konstantin Raikin
director of the Satyricon theater
These groups of supposedly offended people who close performances, close exhibitions, behave very brazenly, to whom the authorities are somehow very strangely neutral - distance themselves. It seems to me that these are ugly attacks on freedom of creativity, on the prohibition of censorship.
And the ban on censorship - I don’t know how anyone feels about it, but I believe that this is the greatest event of centuries-old significance in our life, in the artistic, spiritual life of our country... This is a curse and centuries-old shame in general on our domestic culture, our art - finally , was banned.
Art has enough filters from directors, artistic directors, critics, the soul of the artist himself. These are the bearers of morality. There is no need to pretend that power is the only bearer of morality and ethics. This is wrong.
In general, power has so many temptations; there are so many temptations around it that smart power pays art for the fact that art holds a mirror in front of it and shows in this mirror the mistakes, miscalculations and vices of this power.
But that’s not what the authorities are paying for, as our leaders tell us: “Then do it. We pay you money, you do what you need to do.” Who knows? Will they know what is needed? Who will tell us? Now I hear: “These are values alien to us. Harmful for the people." Who decides? Will they decide? They shouldn't interfere at all. They should help art and culture.
The habit of thinking in extreme categories and making value judgments - this is good, sometimes bad - is characteristic of people. In relation to absolutely every phenomenon in life, a person automatically develops his own opinion, and it is often either positive or negative in relation to this phenomenon. This opinion is always built on its own based on the Nth amount of information raw material that flies into the ears and eyes from one source or another. The formation of an opinion often occurs without realizing whether a person has a sufficient array of true information to build his opinion from this array, like from building material. Having the habit of making value judgments prevents you from looking (or trying to look) at things objectively, without bias, for an hour, that is, without taking into account the personal emotional component, but as if from the outside.
In our society, it is customary to criticize censorship, saying that censorship is bad. In my article I am not going to say that this is good, but still... let's try to abstract from the negative context of perception of this phenomenon. Censorship in itself can be neither good nor bad, since it is just a tool that is used by people in power to achieve their goals, but what these goals are is another question. Also, for example, an ax cannot be good or bad, which in the hands of one turns into a murder weapon, in the hands of another into a tool for extracting wood for heating a house. Censorship is usually vilified by those categories of citizens who consider themselves to be in the opposition and oppose the current authorities. However, a poor man who scolds a rich man for having a lot of money acts in much the same way. Almost certainly, if you swap the positions of power and opposition and, accordingly, give it the opportunity to use such a tool as censorship, it will certainly use it in order to strengthen its position of power. After all, the opposition did not achieve power in order to lose it, the opposition has its own goals that it pursues, and now the same censorship that was scolded yesterday has come to the service of the new owner, helping to achieve his goals. And there is nothing bad or shameful in this, you should not disavow censorship as if you were a fallen woman with whom you were noticed yesterday and now they are trying to blame it. Those rulers who claim that there is no censorship in their country are either lying, which is not to their credit, or are so stupid (which is very unlikely) that they do not use this tool.
There is censorship in Russia - this is undeniable. While working in one of the leading news agencies, I came across the practice when the editor receives a call from the Kremlin administration and he takes dictation to write down the text of the news message that needs to be distributed, and this practice is not only practiced in relation to the news agency in which I worked. The fundamental question is how censorship is used and for what purposes. Indiscriminately prohibiting the dissemination of all information that does not correspond to the “party line”, of course, in the current realities is not in the interests of the authorities. This practice can only work if the people are poorly educated, gullible, if the people gravitate towards some idea and, by indulging and developing this idea, censorship quietly destroys all other alternative ones. This was the case in Germany in the 20s and 30s, when the people were dominated by the idea of revenge for the defeat in the First World War and the idea of nationalism; something similar is happening in Ukraine. In modern Russian society, such a primitive scheme will not work, and the goals of the authorities are more decent than those of the Nazis in Germany. Modern censorship, like spices, is moderately flavored with freedom of speech and publicity. All major federal and regional media are censored, some are more objective, others less so. In general, they all adhere to an information course that is loyal to the authorities, but sometimes they include materials that expose the depravity and ineffectiveness of certain government officials: a local official has stolen (sometimes even reaching the level of the mayor or governor), the housing is dilapidated, the roads are broken, the income level of the population has fallen (which is already clear, so why not say so and get a bonus for truthfulness and objectivity). To distract from current problems, the audience’s attention is transferred to the situation abroad, saying that America is the world’s policeman, Europe is in its service and is populated by gays and bearded women, there is a war in the Middle East, a madhouse in Ukraine, and in Moscow on the eve of the New Year A large wooden ball in the shape of a Christmas tree toy was installed on Manezhnaya Square. Thanks to this, people gradually let off steam and begin to think that everything is not so bad. For those categories of citizens in which the steam pressure is greater, there are opposition media - systemic and non-systemic. They exist because the authorities allow them to do this, because it is in the interests of the authorities themselves. Moreover, a wise ruler does not take absolutely all criticism with hostility; in an hour, you can hear sensible things from your opponent’s lips, listen to them and implement them: roughly speaking, what difference does it make where the president got the information that this or that official was stealing? – from the control department, the prosecutor’s office or Navalny? There is a signal - we need to react.
Censorship manifests itself in the fact that a person or group of people is not allowed to express their point of view in one or another media and, in principle, sometimes this is justified. For example, I am sincerely convinced that the heir to the throne, Tsarevich Alexei, managed to survive and now his direct descendant has more rights to power in Russia than the president and, accordingly, should take the post that rightfully belongs to them. I want to announce this everywhere and campaign, recruit supporters, but they won’t let me present this information on Channel One. “Censorship,” I’ll say. “Crazy,” they will say. And on what basis should I be given airtime? There are tens of millions of people in Russia and everyone has something to say to the whole country, but it is physically impossible to do this. In principle, if you want to convey your position, register the media and write in it whatever your heart desires.
In the end, it seems to me, the most painful question for many to perceive. There is no point in conveying true information to many people, filtering it through censorship, because many are simply not ready to morally or intellectually perceive the truth, interpret it in the right way for the further formation of their point of view and the correct algorithm of action. Truth can, as if through a filter, be passed through a person’s belief system and his “emotional sieve” and then settle in the consciousness not in the form in which it really exists, but in a distorted form. Here the truth is distorted not by the TV screen, but by the screen of the “moral-intellectual” perception of the individual. To illustrate this phenomenon, I will give an everyday example. The husband does not satisfy his wife, either physically or in any other sense, which she has more or less clearly signaled over the course of some time. At one point, the wife cheated on her husband. However, will she, bypassing censorship, convey the truth to him, tell the truth? No. Why? Because the husband is not ready to perceive it objectively. His reaction to the truth will most likely be an attack of anger, rage, jealousy, a stream of abuse will flow, his wife will be humiliated and accused of all sins. An adequate reaction to this “true information” should have been a question to his wife and, first of all, to himself: “Why did this happen?” and further: “Does it make sense to do something and what to do to prevent this from happening again?” ….you need to be prepared for the truth, you need it in order to act and act constructively, not destructively.
The sociality of censorship is determined by the fact that the nature of social relations and the conditions of interaction of various public institutions, social strata, groups and individuals in society largely depend on the quality and volume of information circulating in a society interested in strengthening the stability of its existence and developing to achieve this goal special means. Censorship, which directly regulates information flows, serves as one of the most important mechanisms for protecting society from entropy and protecting its political and moral foundations. It is capable of preventing the spread of anomie in society, preventing excesses of extremism, chauvinism, racism, nationalism, anti-Semitism and other negative phenomena.
However, the role of censorship as a guarantor of a given vector of social development is ambiguous. The time comes when the need to make changes to previously habitual relationships begins to manifest itself in society, which is only possible if there is a strong innovative impulse. In this case, censorship may turn out to be a serious obstacle to these changes if it “in its own way” interprets real and imaginary novelty. Consequently, by its decisions one can judge the degree of readiness of the controlling authority, subordinate to the managerial elite, to perceive the new, to adjust the chosen direction of movement under given historical circumstances.
Censorship is a product of society, which needs restraining principles, tools to prevent the destruction of its body. It represents a unique example of the action of the instinct of self-preservation in a society that seeks to limit the deviations of its members. By selecting information based on the patterns and norms accepted in a given society, censorship makes a verdict on the degree of its compliance with the social framework established for the people living in it, and thereby predetermines the public perception of a particular fact. Thus, it participates in the formation of value orientations. But there is also a serious danger hidden in this, since the pressure of censorship can lead to the conservation of outdated social institutions.
The action of censorship is carried out partly publicly, partly latently and depends on the state of society and its culture. Being an artificial subsystem, censorship serves to strengthen the “parental” systems, but under certain conditions it is capable of “autonomizing” from true social needs and switching to the “self-generation” mode, that is, to searching for and destroying “enemies”, which inevitably begins to lead to the self-destruction of all sociocultural body. So, censorship, on the one hand, can protect culture, and on the other, it can weaken it, blocking the path to cultural creative currents.
The mode of functioning of censorship is directly related to the development of two trends: differentiation and integration in the space of a single and dynamic field of culture. This is due to the fact that in society there is always a desire to streamline the processes of interaction between its various cultures and subcultures. So, it is important to take into account the degree of dependence of the sociodynamics of culture on censorship, since it is with it that a certain order of functioning of a heterogeneous culture in society is associated.
If a “closed” society is formed, then sociality, based on the positions of a misunderstood social benefit, dominates, and censorship is alienated from the cultural tradition, working against it and, ultimately, against society itself. If censorship operates normally in a civilized society, strictly observing established rules and norms, and successfully satisfies its needs for the protection of fundamental human values, then it harmoniously combines both principles: social and cultural.
Power as a prerequisite, a condition for the emergence and development of censorship, ensures the fulfillment of its main functions:
1) the control function, which consists of systematic tracking, assessment, classification and selection of social information in accordance with accepted standards of its production and circulation;
2) regulatory functions, aimed at defining criteria and establishing a procedure for the circulation of information through the preparation of recommendations, regulations, instructions, comments, prohibitions, etc.;
3) a protective function that allows keeping state, military and other secrets secret;
4) repressive function aimed at punishing those guilty of violating censorship rules;
5) the manipulative function, which is expressed in the fact that censorship, by regulating the flow of information, has a certain impact on the perception of facts and decision-making;
6) a preventive function designed to prevent conflict situations;
7) the authorizing function, ensuring the passage of two types of information into the social space: pristine, unchanged, and distorted, adapted by censorship;
8) the standardizing function, which is the fixation and consolidation of certain samples (works of art, artistic movements and styles, scientific theories, etc.) in the sociocultural continuum;
9) the function of stimulating public interest, which causes an increase and awakening of attention to inaccessible information on the part of the uninitiated.
In addition to the listed functions, censorship also performs a number of related ones: regulatory, communicative, translational, etc. The vast majority of them (with the exception of manipulative), if they do not turn into “their other”, have a positive orientation. But, contrary to its nature, censorship is often used by various social actors to the detriment of society and culture.
Let us list some general characteristics of censorship as a social institution in our time:
a) the scope of its activities is primarily related to social information;
b) there are special censorship institutions. These are various government bodies (ministries, departments, etc.), public organizations (foundations, associations, commissions, committees, party bodies, etc.), religious institutions (synod, departments and councils for the supervision of literature of theological content, etc.). ) and a certain group of officials - censors who perform the corresponding functions (in some cases their responsibilities are transferred to editors, experts, consultants, etc.);
c) the norms and principles of its activities are set by legal acts of the state, official instructions, charters of public organizations, and moral criteria accepted in society;
d) the material means used by censorship include special equipment necessary for viewing and storing photo, film and television materials, listening to radio broadcasts and tape recordings, viewing letters, etc.
According to the correct remark of E. Durkheim, there is no institution that would not degenerate at a certain moment. In the case of censorship, this statement is true, but only in individual cases.
An analogue of censorship at the everyday level can be considered public opinion, which is based on authority and tradition. By tabooing certain topics (and even words), it ensures that discussion proceeds within certain boundaries. Of course, official censorship often differs in its assessments from public opinion (for example, in our recent past this concerned the work of V. S. Vysotsky). Literary and artistic criticism, under certain conditions, is also capable of taking on the functions of censorship. By joining its system, it begins to fulfill not only the mission of a controller, regulator, creator of a standard, but also an “informer” pointing out “harmful” works to the authorities.
Traditional and new censorship institutions reflect the diversity of its subjects. They can all be considered as performing subjects (“censors”). One more category can also be distinguished - “customers”, that is, subjects who more or less actively support the activities of “censors”, but do not directly participate in it. These can be both individuals and certain social groups and organizations that are aware of the need to protect their own interests and principles using such means. To do this, they attract “censors” and, as a rule, seek to substantiate their claims by bringing them under legal regulations. Sometimes this is done post factum (as an example, it is enough to refer to the episode when the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation filed claims against the NTV television company in connection with the "Dolls" program). The division of censorship subjects into “performers” and “customers” according to such criteria turns out to be relative, and sometimes some “customers” simultaneously act as “performers”. In addition, the versatility of the interests of various subjects inevitably leads to the emergence of contradictions between them. Thus, there may even be situations where there is a contradiction between the interests of the authorities and society and the immediate needs of a particular censorship institution and its employees.
Constitutional prohibitions on censorship should be observed only in relation to the emergence of institutions of a certain type, but not to abolish censorship in principle.
Modern technologies make significant adjustments to the work of censorship. Xerox, personal computers and other technological advances of the late 20th century led to the decentralization of the system of production and distribution of information. As the Canadian sociologist M. McLuhan noted, an ordinary person, if desired, now turned from a consumer into a publisher. The new “screen” culture has raised questions for censorship that had no analogues in the past: this is the problem of protecting data banks of state and non-state structures from their illegal use, and the fight against “computer piracy,” and much more. Finding answers to them is not easy, but it is vitally important for the global community.
Thus, censorship has real prospects. Politics has a decisive influence only on its specific use by certain social actors. The future lies in flexible censorship operating within the framework of the rule of law and complemented by the voluntary participation of broad sections of society in it.
