CENSORSHIP BLOGS

Censorship blog #1: Script

The problem with censorship is that when it gets going, it’s difficult to stop. It gathers momentum and sweeps up everything in its way. Not even the old greats can avoid its warpath as it throws out what it deems inappropriate without even pausing for breath. Take, for example, Martin, the ill-fated protagonist of the Deutschland series (Sundance TV/RTL, 2015-20), who must question two students from West Germany trying to smuggle a copy Shakespeare’s collected works into East Germany, the GDR. (Surely this contradicts the GDR’s presentation of itself as ‘Leseland DDR’, or ‘Reading Nation GDR’.) 

In Poland, the plight of Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz, who became the first woman to sail solo around the world between March 1976 and April ’78, was publicised widely at the time albeit in a heavily censored manner. Letters she sent to her husband during her voyage were published by the communist regime to depict acts of national heroism, but these letters were censored to omit any suggestion of trepidation or fear. Such strict censorship legislation led to the promulgation of much samizdat literature as a means by which the intelligentsia could write and disseminate work that circumvented the regime’s clampdown on the expression of opposition ideas.

Censorship blog #2: Screen

Despite state-imposed censorship, brave individuals risked arrest and imprisonment so that western literature and media could find its way into apartment blocks situated on the outskirts of the city. A scene in A Besúgó (HBO Max, 2022) shows students eagerly gathering in a university dorm basement behind a student bar in Budapest to watch Scarface with a Hungarian voiceover. 

In Romania, the dissemination of movies from the 1970s and ’80s starring the likes of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger became widespread despite the state’s strict monitoring of television consumption. This seepage of Hollywood movies (and the ideals that came with them) across Romania was largely thanks to one woman, Irina Margareta Nistor, who dubbed around 1,000 films from a basement flat in Bucharest – an act that risked being found out by Romania’s secret police, the Securitate. 

Censorship blog #3: Sound

Radio has a long tradition of helping people living in heavily censored countries to form a political worldview devoid of the propaganda found in their national state authorised broadcasts. During the mid-twentieth century in Hungary, for example, people regularly listened to Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, Armed Forces Network, Radio Paris, Radio Monaco, Radio Luxembourg, Radio Madrid, Vatican Radio, and, primarily, the BBC. The ‘Voice of Free Hungary’, as the RFE became known, stood out as being more strident, even propagandist, in its anti-communist tone than its Polish or Czechoslovakian desks. RFE was also ahead of its competitors, often being the first to broadcast major events such as when Soviet troops crushed the protests at Poznán that took place between 28 and 30 June 1956. Yet, RFE was also criticised for being too pro-America in its agenda. 

After the death of Stalin in March 1953, Imre Nagy replaced Mátyás Rákosi as leader. From 1953 to ’55, a ‘New Course’ paved the way for the destalinization of Hungary. During this time the number of radio licenses purchased by Hungarians more than doubled from 539,000 to 1,270,000. Albeit brief – Rákosi resumed control in 1955 – Nagy’s leadership gave Hungarians the opportunity to tune in to western frequencies. With these newly acquired radio sets, Hungarians, especially those living on the Western border, could ride the waves and find a wide range of news and culture that would otherwise be censored. 

Censorship blog #4: Society

Today, in former Soviet-occupied countries, censorship is making an emboldened return with governments limiting freedom of expression concerning abortion and LGBTQ rights as well as refugee and political rights. 

Poland and Hungary both score poorly in the Reporters Sans Frontières (‘Reporters Without Borders’) (RSF) index that ranks each country according to its press freedoms. Currently, as of July 2023, Norway comes in first and North Korea comes in last place at 180 (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Russia, and China are not far behind). Poland and Hungary, with scores of 57 and 72 respectively, do not fare so well. This places Poland between Kosovo (56) and Burkina Faso (58) and clearly shows that Hungary is doing worse than countries like Niger (61) and Liberia (66), at least in terms of its press freedoms. In their description of Hungary, the RSF attributes their poor ranking to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who they deem a ‘press freedom predator’ who ‘built a media empire whose outlets follow his party’s orders’. RSF also state that Orbán’s FIDESZ party has ‘seized de facto control of 80% of the country’s media’ through sustained political and economic pressure and canny manoeuvres. As a result, opposition media reporters fall victim to online harassment and imbalanced critique. 

In line with the RSF’s findings, Hungarian national television can be discredited and is in need of overhaul due to obtuse politicisation, nationalism, and biased news reportage on channels such as M1, Duna TV, and Echo TV. 

In Poland, the popular radio station, Radio Trojka, removed Kazik Staszewski’s song ‘Your Pain Is Better Than Mine’ from its website in May 2020 because it obliquely criticised Poland’s de facto leader and founder of the Law and Justice party, Jarosław Kaczynski. 

In Czechia, Andrej Babiš was accused of subsidy fraud and subverting press freedom after he used newspapers he owns (Mladá Fronta Dnes and Lidové) to call into question and delegitimise serious journalism, with the ultimate aim of diverting readers to his social media account ahead of a forthcoming election. (He was acquitted in January 2023.) The situation in Slovakia is not much better as its media independence seems up for grabs in light of proposed changes to its funding model that would replace its licence fee paying system with a direct government funded model. 

In response to this clear constriction of press and creative freedom, writers and publishers are petitioning for official recognition of those who risked and suffered persecution at the hands of the Communist regimes between 1948 and ’89 for publishing work deemed illicit by the Ministries of Culture across the Eastern bloc (the GDR banned Donald Duck and Ceausescu stipulated that typewriters must be registered with the police so that all written material could be traced). In 2020, Slovakia approved 12 October as the Day of Samizdat (this date also marks the killing of two LGBTQ persons outside the Tepláreň bar in Bratislava – an unhappy yet poignant coincidence). This was followed by Czechia who declared 12 October a Day of Samizdat in 2023. With the increase in state control and limitations of the freedoms of speech and media, will the Day of Samizdat manage to make its mark in Slovakia and Czechia, and will memories of a time when samizdat was necessary underline the need to fight for freedoms of expression and creativity across the other former Soviet bloc countries?