Censorship In Russia

One of the predominant literary themes to come out of Russia, particularly post-1900 Russia, was dystopia. In the early 20th century, censorship of such writing was extremely strict. The government censored any works, or for that matter any people, that questioned or criticized the authority of the government. Despite this and the exile they might face, writers like Yevgeny Zamyatin produced works such as We that criticized the nature of a totalitarian government that oppressed its people, much like that which existed in Soviet Russia at the time. In the 21st century, though censorship is not nearly as prominent, the Putin-led Russian government mirrors the authoritarian design that defined it in the Soviet era. Along with this change has come

It is a state or community in which a government enforces absolute control, and where most all aspects of life are unpleasant. The word “utopia” first appeared in 1516 in Thomas More’s Utopia, and evolved until 1868 when John Stuart Mill coined the term “dystopia”, again essentially to mean the opposite of a perfect world (Geetha 117). An integral thread throughout dystopias is the existence of a totalitarian government with extreme, unquestioned power. Dissenters will often face swift, unmerciful punishment in order to maintain the existence of the state. Dystopian literature is a genre that is very popularly used to satirize governmental operation, but is also intriguing in that in can provide a fresh perspective on political issues that may otherwise be ignored for their mundanity or lack of forefront in the minds of everyday people. Also, contrary to utopia, where satire usually moves backward in time form the future utopian state to the present, “dystopia satirizes by showing how much worse a future plausibly derived from the present could be” (Maus, 74). Authors will often portray a dystopia to appear as a utopia, a practice seen in Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik through the narrator’s idealistic, self-centered point of view. According to Maus, “dystopias posit a terrible society resulting from specific utopian premises” (72). From the narrator’s perspective, the world is perfect—the oprichniks hold absolute control, and destroy anything or anyone that goes against the “perfect” system of government in