A Tale of Two Censorships: In Russia & United States

“We, Russians, are fighting to get out of the chains of slavery, but once we achieve freedom — we want to get back to our chains again.”

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian writer.

The American screenwriter Dalton Trumbo — who scripted legendary movies like Roman Holidays, Spartacus and the Brave One — was a communist. What could be worse than being a communist? Yes, being a communist in the United States right at the beginning of the Cold War in 1950’s.

He had to pay a high price for his ‘non-American’ views. He got a prison sentence for four years and was banned from Hollywood. Many American lawmakers were afraid that Trumbo and ten other members of C.P.U.S.A (Communist Party of United States) were KGB spies working against the United States in Hollywood. None of them actually had any connection with the U.S.S.R.

Trumbo could confess and deny that he supports Communist views — but he didn’t. It could save him from years of being labelled as traitor and from writing scripts under different pseudonyms. He actually was awarded two Academy Awards — which he didn’t take — because nobody knew that it was him who wrote that. (He wrote under a dozen of fake names)

After years of working covertly in Hollywood and still scripting masterpieces that were shown in movie theatres all across United States, President John F. Kennedy pardoned brave screenwriter, because there was a full blown Hollywood revolt demanding reinstatement of Dalton Trumbo.

All these years, Trumbo was fighting not only for his own political views, but for Hollywood accepting different ideas. He was sure that the Hollywood and art itself couldn’t exist under censorship. Because art is freedom in itself.

There is a smaller version of Dalton Trumbo in modern-day Russia. His name is Konstantin Raikin. He is a famous movie director and recently gave a speech criticising Russian government for attempting to bring censorship back into movie industry.

Speaking at the conference of Russian Movie Professionals, Raikin said that “the collapse of the USSR and freedom of speech that Russian people gained is too valuable to give up.” He was calling for art-makers to unite against the censorship that attempts to come back to Russia.

His words instantly took over the headlines of Russian press. Exactly like Trumbo, he was labelled by many as a traitor of Russia, but if Trumbo was blamed for bringing Soviet values to United States — Raikin is blamed for bringing Western values to Russia. “Whose side are you on?” one of the newspapers headlines said.

These two stories — though 60 years apart — have so much in common. Both movie makers, Raikin and Trumbo, were and are blacklisted by their governments for showing a different side of the story. They both took a risk and put their careers and lives in danger for the principles as the art makers. Both were and are bullied not only by their governments, but even by their fellow countrymen — Russian and American citizens — for being supposedly foreign-spies who they definitely were and are not.

Those fellow countrymen — who consider themselves to be ‘the voice of the nation’- once supported Hitler’s and Stalin’s purges against the ‘enemies of the state’. Millions of innocent people were killed, because millions of people supported dictators. History shows that the government can shift the opinion of the masses whatever direction it wants to.

In the name of culture and religious values, in modern-day Russia, people of art are being labelled as traitors of the nation. Imagine coming to your house and seeing a message written with the red paint on your garden wall saying “death to enemies’. That’s what happened to Dalton Trumbo’s family and similar messages are coming to art-makers in Russia.

Raikin is warning his fellow colleagues that if they won’t fight back against censorship today, they can end up in the same way as other famous Russian writers and musicians like Prokofiev, Solzhenitsyn, Anna Akhmatova, Pasternak and Shostakovich. In Gulag, or in the best case scenario in exile. (Many Russian writers who won Nobel Prize in Literature didn’t live in Russia and were in exile).

Not everything is so grim, though, as long as we have people like Raikin and Trumbo. Because as long as we have people who can stand for their principles, our societies have future.

Maybe one day, elected Russian president, will pardon Russian art makers, in the same way as John F. Kennedy did pardon Dalton Trumbo.

Originally published at theart.quora.com.