HOW MANY CENSORS SHOULD WE HAVE MR. TRUMP?

In the spirit of political debate and in a search for understanding I thought it would be interesting to compare Donald Trump’s current regime to that of another oppressive regime, Imperial Russia and the reign of Tsar Nicholas I.

After the Decembrist uprising — the attempted overthrow of the Russian government in 1825 — the newly minted tsar, Nicholas I, issued a series of edicts that would be sure to make “The Donald” salivate.

In much the same way that Donald Trump attempts to stifle the press, Nicholas enacted the “Cast-Iron Statute,” a law forbidding anything published or performed that would be detrimental to the regime. That’s right, Saturday Night Live would have been in violation, and Alec Baldwin would perhaps be relegated to exile.

Unfortunately, the madness didn’t stop there. In 1825 Tsar Nicholas created the “Third Section,” a clandestine police organization tasked with gathering information on religious groups operating within the state and keeping tabs on foreigners living in Russia, traveling in Russia and entering or leaving Russia. If this one sounds familiar, it’s because it is — Donald Trump’s travel ban anyone?

So, how many censors do we have? The answer can be found in the words of A.V. Nikitenko, a censor himself:

“So, how many censors do we have? The general censorship branch of the Ministry of Education, the Department of Censorship, the Secret Supreme Committee, the censorship branch of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the theater censorship branch of the Ministry of the Imperial Court, the newspaper censorship branch at the Postal Department; the censorship branch at the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery. . . . I made a mistake, there was more. There were also censors in the department of legal writings in the Second Section of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery, and there were censors of foreign books. Only twelve. . . . If you count all those censors, the number would be greater than the number of books published during the year.”1

1. Yanov, Alexander. The Institute of Modern Russia. The Autocrat: Nicholas I and Russia’s Lost Years. https://imrussia.org/en/analysis/nation/638-the-autocrat-nicholas-i-and-russias-lost-years