Index on Censorship is an organisation campaigning for freedom of expression. It produces a quarterly magazine of the same name from London. It is directed by the non-profit-making Writers and Scholars International, Ltd (WSI) in association with the UK-registered charity Index on Censorship (founded as the Writers and Scholars Educational Trust), which are both chaired by the British television broadcaster, writer and former politician Trevor Phillips. The current CEO is Jemimah Steinfeld.
WSI was createdScammell, Michael (1984), "How Index on Censorship Started", in Theiner, George, They Shoot Writers, Don't They?, London: Faber & Faber, pp. 19–28. . by poet Stephen Spender, Oxford philosopher Stuart Hampshire, the publisher and editor of The Observer David Astor, and the writer and expert on the Soviet Union Edward Crankshaw. The founding editor of Index on Censorship was the critic and translator Michael Scammell (1972–1981), who still serves as a patron of the organisation.
Founding history
An Appeal from the USSR
The original impetus for the creation of Index on Censorship came from an Open Letter addressed "To World Public Opinion" by two Soviet dissenters, Pavel Litvinov and Larisa Bogoraz. In the words of the samizdat periodical A Chronicle of Current Events, they described "the atmosphere of illegality" surrounding the January 1968 trial of Ginzburg and Galanskov and called for "public condemnation of this disgraceful trial, for the punishment of those responsible, the release of the accused from detention and a retrial which would fully conform with the legal regulations and be held in the presence of international observers."see "Protests about Galanskov-Ginzburg trial", A Chronicle of Current Events, (1.2, 30 April 1968). (One of the accused Alexander Ginzburg resumed his dissident activities on release from the camps, until expelled from the USSR in 1979; another, the writer Yuri Galanskov, died in a camp in November 1972.)
The Times (London) published a translation of the Open Letter and in reply the English poet Stephen Spender composed a brief telegram:
“We, a group of friends representing no organisation, support your statement, admire your courage, think of you and will help in any way possible.”
Among the other 15 British and US signatories were the poet W. H. Auden, philosopher A. J. Ayer, musician Yehudi Menuhin, man of letters J. B. Priestley, actor Paul Scofield, sculptor Henry Moore, philosopher Bertrand Russell, writer Mary McCarthy and composer Igor Stravinsky.
Later that year, on 25 August, Bogoraz, Litvinov and five others demonstrated on Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
A few weeks before, Litvinov sent Spender a letter (translated and published several years later in the first May 1972 issue of Index). He suggested that a regular publication might be set up in the West "to provide information to world public opinion about the real state of affairs in the USSR".
Title, scope and relations with Amnesty International Spender and his colleagues, Stuart Hampshire, David Astor, Edward Crankshaw and founding editor Michael Scammell decided, like Amnesty International, to cast their net wider. They wished to document patterns of censorship in right-wing dictatorships — the military regimes of Latin America and the dictatorships in Greece, Spain and Portugal — as well as the Soviet Union and its satellites.
Meanwhile, in 1971, Amnesty International began to publish English translations of each new issue of A Chronicle of Current Events, which documented human rights abuses in the USSR and included a regular "Samizdat Update". In a 2020 interview, Michael Scammell explained the informal division of labour between the two London-based organisations: "When we received human rights material we forwarded it to Amnesty and when Amnesty received a report of censorship they passed it on to us"."Pavel Litvinov and the Creation of Index on Censorship", Colta.ru, 8 August 2020 (in Russian).
Originally, as suggested by Scammell, the magazine was to be called Index, a reference to the lists or indices of banned works that are central to the history of censorship: the Roman Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books); the Soviet Union's Censor's Index; and apartheid South Africa's Jacobsens Index of Objectionable Literature.
Scammell later admitted that the words "on censorship" were added as an afterthought when it was realised that the reference would not be clear to many readers. "Panicking, we hastily added the words 'on Censorship' as a subtitle", wrote Scammell in the December 1981 issue of the magazine, "and this it has remained ever since, nagging me with its ungrammaticality (Index of Censorship, surely) and a standing apology for the opacity of its title."
Describing the organisation's objectives at its inception, Stuart Hampshire said:
"the tyrant's concealments of oppression and of absolute cruelty should always be challenged. There should be noise of publicity outside every detention centre and concentration camp and a published record of every tyrannical denial of free expression."
The magazine
Index on Censorship magazine was founded by Michael Scammell in 1972. It supports free expression, publishing distinguished writers from around the world, exposing suppressed stories, initiating debate, and providing an international record of censorship. The quarterly editions of the magazine usually focus on a country or region or a recurring theme in the global free expression debate. Index on Censorship also publishes short works of fiction and poetry by notable new writers. Index Index, a round-up of abuses of freedom of expression worldwide, was published in the magazine until December 2008.
While the original inspiration to create Index came from Soviet dissidents, from its outset the magazine covered censorship in right-wing dictatorships then ruling Greece and Portugal, the military regimes of Latin America, and the Soviet Union and its satellites. The magazine has covered other challenges facing free expression, including religious extremism, the rise of nationalism, and Internet censorship.
In the first issue of May 1972, Stephen Spender wrote: "Obviously there is the risk of a magazine of this kind becoming a bulletin of frustration. However, the material by writers which is censored in Eastern Europe, Greece, South Africa and other countries is among the most exciting that is being written today. Moreover, the question of censorship has become a matter of impassioned debate; and it is one which does not only concern totalitarian societies." Accordingly, the magazine has sought to shed light on other challenges facing free expression, including religious extremism, the rise of nationalism, and internet censorship. Issues are usually organised by theme, and contain a country-by-country list of recent cases involving censorship, restrictions on freedom of the press and other free speech violations. Occasionally, Index on Censorship publishes short works of fiction and poetry by notable new writers as well as censored ones.
Over the half century it has been in existence, Index on Censorship has presented works by some of the world's most distinguished writers and thinkers, including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Milan Kundera, Václav Havel, Nadine Gordimer, Salman Rushdie, Doris Lessing, Arthur Miller, Noam Chomsky, and Umberto Eco.Hampshire, Stuart (1997), "Should Index be above the battle?" in W. L. Webb & Rose Bell, An Embarrassment of Tyrannies: 25 years of Index on Censorship, London: Victor Gollancz, pp. 186–195. .
Issues under the editorship of Jemimah Steinfeld featured investigations into how the UK's royal family censor their archives, the plight of Afghan journalists and the rise of Narendra Modi. The editor before, Rachael Jolley, looked at taboos, the legacy of the Magna Carta and Shakespeare's legacy in protest. There have been special issues on China, reporting from the Middle East, and on internet censorship. The Russia issue (January 2008) won an Amnesty International Media Award 2008 for features by Russian journalists Fatima Tlisova and Sergei Bachinin, and veteran Russian free speech campaigner Alexei Simonov, founder of the Glasnost Defence Foundation.
Since January 2010 it has been published by SAGE Publications, an independent for-profit academic publisher. Between 2005 and 2009, the magazine was published and distributed by Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis group.
In addition to print and annual subscriptions, Index on Censorship is available on Exact Editions, an application for the iPhone/iPad and Android.
It is also a partner with Eurozine, a network of more than 60 European cultural journals.
Publishing landmarks
Other landmark publications include Ken Saro-Wiwa's writings from prison (Issue 3/1997) and a translation of the Czechoslovak Charter 77 manifesto drafted by Václav Havel and others in Issue 3/1977. Index published the first English translation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Index on Censorship published the stories of the "disappeared" in Argentina and the work of banned poets in Cuba; the work of Chinese poets who escaped the massacres that ended the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Index on Censorship has a long history of publishing writers in translation, including Bernard-Henri Lévy, Ivan Klima, Ma Jian and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, and news reports including Anna Politkovskaia's coverage of the war in Chechnya (Issue 2/2002).
Tom Stoppard's play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977) is set in a Soviet mental institution and was inspired by the personal account of former detainee Victor Fainberg and Clayton Yeo's expose of the use of psychiatric abuse in the USSR, published in Index on Censorship (Issue 2, 1975).Nadel, Ira (2004). Double Act: A Life of Tom Stoppard. London: Methuen. pp. 264–268. . It was first performed with the London Symphony Orchestra. Stoppard became a member of the advisory board of Index on Censorship in 1978 and remains connected to the publication as a Patron of Index.
Index on Censorship published the World Statement by the International Committee for the Defence of Salman Rushdie in support of "the right of all people to express their ideas and beliefs and to discuss them with their critics on the basis of mutual tolerance, free from censorship, intimidation and violence. Six months later, Index published the Hunger Strike Declaration from four student leaders of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Liu Xiaobo, Zhou Duo, Hou Dejian and Gao Xin.
Index Index, a round-up of abuses of freedom of expression worldwide, continued to be published in each edition of the magazine until December 2008, when this function was transferred to the website. The offences against free expression documented in that first issue's Index Index listing included censorship in Greece and Spain, then dictatorships, and Brazil, which had just banned the film Zabriskie Point on the grounds that it "insulted a friendly power" – the United States, where it had been made and freely shown.
Index on Censorship paid special attention to the situation in then Czechoslovakia between the Soviet invasion of 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989, devoting an entire issue to the country eight years after the Prague Spring (Issue 3/1976). It included several pieces by Václav Havel, including a first translation of his one act play Conversation, and a letter to Czech officials on police censorship of his December 1975 production of The Beggar's Opera by John Gay.