Where Is Poland? | Censorship

Chapter 3

Censorship

There is an oppressive system of censorship in place in the Russian-occupied lands, whereby all books, theatrical shows, periodicals and engravings are subject to careful scrutiny . This even includes publications brought in from abroad. The Censorship Committee also monitors printing houses and bookshops.

A page from a censored Russian book. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Censorship, or controlling everything

Censorship was practiced in all three partitions, but the most oppressive system was in the Russian-held lands. The Tsar’s system of censorship applied to nearly all published materials: covering not just books, newspapers, and periodicals, but also engravings, even obituaries and the inscriptions on funeral wreaths, and for a certain period even musical scores without words. As a result, the sacramental endorsement дозволено цензурою ('approved by censors') had to be written on just about any printed material whatsoever: the only exceptions being business cards, wedding and ball invitations, product labels, price-lists (without advertisements!), and paper for wrapping goods.

In practice, that meant that before publication, most texts had to be submitted for approval to the Censorship Committee, where all ‘undesirable’ content was identified and removed. Sometimes such interventions would simply leave empty spaces behind (in the case of poetry, Polish readers would then pencil the words back in). In the press, on the other hand, ‘improper’ articles would be printed with certain words or passages blacked out.

The censors would not permit any printed matter that ran counter to the spirit of the prevailing religion, or which might even to the slightest extent undermine the sense of respect for the ruling Majesty, for public administration or state institutions. All criticism of monarchic rule and any propaganda regarding social and state reforms was prohibited. Also banned were any texts promulgating the 'evil sciences' (in other words, socialism) or urging the challenging or overthrowing of the existing social order. Finally, it was out of the question to promote Polish patriotism in print, especially to foster any 'illusory hope' for a restoration of the Polish state.

Censorship applied not just to the works of contemporary writers, like Mickiewicz and Słowacki. Censors could sometimes manage to identify dangerous fragments even in the works of much earlier writers, such as the verses of the Renaissance-era poet Mikołaj Rej. The works of certain foreign writers were also often deemed dangerous for the state and public morals, such as those of Byron, Dante, Shakespeare, Racine, Schiller and Victor Hugo.

Postcard showing Russian officer patrolling the border near Toruń, 1900–1906. Source: Polona.pl

Smuggling dangerous ideas

Censors also kept a close eye on books brought in from abroad. In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, one-third of the 12,000 Polish books imported into the Russian Empire from outside (mainly from Galicia, the province held by Austro-Hungary) were seized. That is why books by émigré authors were most often simply smuggled in.

Another way of avoiding censorship was to publish under the cover of a false printing location. Adam Mickiewicz’s Księgi pielgrzymstwa [Book of the Polish Pilgrimage] and Reduta Ordona [Ordon’s Redoubt], but the frontmatter of the books stated that they had been printed in Paris, Avignon, and Leipzig. This practice ultimately got Ossolineum’s director, Konstanty Słotwiński, convicted to 8 years imprisonment in a fortress.

Censors were also avoided by the practice of circulating illegal political publications. Such publications were printed abroad, then smuggled into the Polish lands. At the end of the nineteenth century, one of the people involved in transporting and distributing such illegal printed matter (known as bibuła ), was Józef Piłsudski, later the marshal of the revived Polish state, then as an activist of the Polish Socialist Party. He wrote:

In the revolutionary jargon, they use the name ‘bibuła’ for any illegal printed matter not carrying tthe sacramental formula ‘approved by censors’. […] Even the loyalists, staunch opponents to any illegal activity, have published several books abroad, so as then – no worse than the revolutionaries – to smuggle them across the cordon and distribute them among society. Bibuła therefore comes in various kinds: clerical, patriotic, socialist, even loyalist.