The operations of the Russian Foreign Censorship Committee provide a unique and vivid perspective on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian social values and attitudes toward foreign influences.
Literacy increased substantially in nineteenth-century Russia, and the rising intelligentsia were voracious consumers of the printed word. Many of these raznochintsy harbored grievances against an autocracy that they felt did not adequately appreciate them, and consequently the government feared that these new literates would not only read "unsafe" books, but, poisoned by the ideas in them, might turn against the established order.
The censorship office, contrary to what is sometimes assumed, did not consist only of bureaucrats and hacks. It included intel-ectuals and artists who often made eloquent pleas for permitting the distribution of banned books. Some, while disapproving of censorship in principle, in practice justified suppression of certain books on the grounds that they were preventing the circulation of inflammatory and false depictions of Russia as a land of non-European barbarians.
The workings of this committee constitute an intriguing tapestry of cultural values, predispositions, and prejudices-a tapestry that the Soviets later would weave into a new fabric.