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Soviet Union [USSR] The Government Role
In the late 1980s, censorship authority was exercised by
Glavlit, which employed some 70,000 censors to review information
before it was disseminated by publishing houses, editorial offices,
and broadcasting studios. Government censorship organs attended to
all levels, in the forms of territorial, provincial, municipal, and
district organs. No mass medium escaped Glavlit's control. All
press agencies and radio and television stations had a Glavlit
representative on their editorial staffs. Although Glavlit was
attached to the Council of Ministers, many émigrés asserted that
Glavlit answered not only to the Ideological Department but also to
the KGB.
Although the Ideological Department regulated ideological and
political censorship, the KGB handled classified information and,
by extension, controlled Glavlit's "administrative and staffing"
responsibilities. Many Glavlit censors were former KGB members. The
KGB and Glavlit worked together to implement a compendium of
regulations contained in the Censor's Index, which contained
classified information on "state secrets" that could not be
revealed in the media. Apparently, the index contained between 300
and 1,000 pages, with periodically updated lists of military,
technical, economic statistical, and other data on various people
and issues forbidden for dissemination. As a result, editors and
writers rarely touched on proscribed material. If they published
any unsanctioned information, the censors either instituted harsher
publication restrictions or fired those who broke the rules.
The government also regulated information through the central
and republic ministries of culture and similar all-union state
committees and specialized state censors. The ministries of culture
helped coordinate centralized censorship for Glavlit as well as
execute other literary controls. Three distinct state committees
implemented censorship policies throughout the country: the State
Committee for Publishing Houses, Printing Plants, and the Book
Trade (Goskomizdatvennyi komitet po delan izdatel'stv, poligrafii,
i knizhnoi torgovli--Goskomizdat); the States Committee for
Television and Radio Broadcasting (Gousdarstvennyi komitet po
televideniyu i radioveshchaniya--Gostelradio); and the State
Committee for Cinenatography (Gousdasstvennyi komitet po
kinematografii--Goskino). Furthermore, the dissemination of books
on cultural, political, military, scientific, technical, economic,
and social issues fell under the purview of separate government
printing houses. These individual printing houses oversaw the
numerical distributions of all titles, and they limited access to
certain books deemed to be related to state security, even if the
information was unclassified. The publishing houses also regulated
the number of copies of foreign titles published internally and
Soviet titles published abroad.
The government censorship hierarchy not only maintained
comprehensive controls over information distributed by the news
services worldwide but the official news organs--TASS and Novosti--
regulated all news wire service information to ensure government
control of information disseminated to the public. In 1988 TASS
employed about 65,000 professional correspondents and journalists.
Because TASS operated an extensive number of news agencies around
the world, in the late 1980s its 2.5 million lines reached more
than 20,000 subscribers daily. From 20 to 25 percent of its
subscribers were media organizations that depended almost entirely
on TASS for foreign and domestic reporting. Consequently, TASS
officials, who were located in every republic's capital and in
nearly all provincial cities, serviced many newspapers, some of
which allotted nearly 50 percent of their news space to
TASS-relayed information.
Created in 1961, Novosti supplemented TASS. Serving as the
conduit for information that TASS could not accommodate, Novosti
focused mainly on foreign reporting. By assuming responsibilities
for feature stories, commentary, interviews, and other articles
featuring the best side of Soviet society, Novosti attempted to
provide its domestic and foreign readership with human interest
stories in ways TASS could not. Novosti's correspondents annually
transmitted almost 50,000 articles. Together, TASS and Novosti
served as the primary means for distributing Soviet viewpoints
around the world.
Procedures for censorship of military and scientific
information differed from those followed for other kinds of
information. Before information relating to any aspect of the
Soviet military was disseminated through the media, the material
first had to have been approved by the military censor and then by
Glavlit. This complex censorship process began with the first-level
editor in Moscow, who censored the article and sent a letter
detailing the author's background and sources used to a military
censor. Once it reached the military censorship authorities of the
General Staff, the material had to be sanctioned again before it
reached the penultimate stage--review by the political-military and
KGB editors. Whether the information was regional or all-union in
scope, the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy
and the military directorate of the KGB reportedly advised, if not
instructed, the military censors, despite the military censors'
official obligations to the General Staff. Once these military
officers had read and approved the article, it went to the Glavlit
censors for publication. If the military officers had any
hesitation about a piece, they had the authority to request that
the editor discuss with them any aspect of the article under
question. Soviet sources also have revealed that once the Glavlit
censors received the edited piece from the military officers, they
never questioned the revisions and routinely distributed the
article to the appropriate media.
Similar procedures applied to science censors within the
Academy of Sciences (see Glossary), who targeted material related
to "national defense" in the areas of science and technology.
Censors specializing in various scientific disciplines concentrated
on stripping any material that could be construed to reveal the
regime's national security policies. For example, publications and
broadcasts related to outer space events were examined by the
Commission on Research and Exploitation of Cosmic Space, associated
with the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences.
Other censors concentrated on such topics as radio electronics,
chemistry, geology, and computer science. The atomic energy
censors, located at the State Committee for the Utilization of
Atomic Energy, oversaw materials concentrating on nuclear energy,
even those that focused on science fiction. After approval by the
specialized censors, the works were referred to Glavlit.
Data as of May 1989
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