Index on Censorship magazine celebrated the launch of its summer 2017 issue with an evening exploring the 1917 Russian Revolution and its effects on our freedoms today.
The Calvert 22 Foundation-hosted event examined the role of propaganda, culture and politics from around the globe.
Speakers included Don Guttenplan, editor-at-large for The Nation, who spoke on the cultural Cold War; Katya Rogatchevskaia, lead curator of Central and East European collections at the British Library, who examined the role of Russian propaganda both during the Cold War and today; and Adam Cathcart, a specialist in Chinese history at Leeds University, who spoke on the impact of Soviet art and music in North Korea.
Guests were invited to listen to actors performing excerpts from speeches by Lenin, Stalin and Putin. Guttenplan noted the speeches reminded him of the dialogue he hears in today’s political realm. “When we were listening to Lenin’s speech, I was thinking, well that doesn’t sound that different from John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn,” he said.
Rogatchevskaia discussed how art and propaganda influenced the Russian Revolution. “It was important that a revolution was happening at the same time in art and in social and political life,” she said. “These two revolutions actually met at one point and that created a fantastic abundance of really great art, and that’s why we remember this period.”
Cathcart spoke of the “cultural cold war” with South Korea on one side and China and North Korea on the other. He explained how cultural revolutions in South Korea have influenced the Chinese mindset and their favour of North Korean customs. “Chinese scholars have to come to grips with the Korean wave,” Cathcart said. “This is a country that has done extremely well, everybody’s on high broadband internet, the pop bands are doing extremely well. North Korea exports almost nothing culturally. North Korean music is something they’ve [the Chinese] tried to bring in competition with South Korea.”
Index’s summer publication, which was given to all attendees, features reports from across the globe including Uzbekistan, China, Russia, Cuba and Turkey. Writers for this issue include David Aaronovitch, Nikita Khrushchev’s great-granddaughter Nina Khrushcheva, and an interview with author Margaret Atwood.
The event was held on at Calvert 22 Foundation, which celebrates the culture and creativity of the New East.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, lead Curator of Central and East European collections at the British Library, discusses Russia’s revolutionary propaganda. (Photo: Sean Gallagher / Index on Censorship)
An actor reads from a speech by Vladimir Lenin. (Photo: Sean Gallagher / Index on Censorship)
Adam Cathcart, a specialist and lecturer in Chinese history at Leeds University, explores the impact of Soviet art on North Korean art and culture. (Photo: Sean Gallagher / Index on Censorship)
Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley introduces the summer 2017 issue. (Photo: Sean Gallagher / Index on Censorship)
Don Guttenplan, Editor-at-Large for The Nation, shares his take on the cultural cold war, (Photo: Sean Gallagher / Index on Censorship)
Actors read from speeches by Lenin (Matthew Romain), Stalin (Amanda Wilkin) and Putin (Jennifer Leong). (Photo: Sean Gallagher / Index on Censorship)
An actor reads from a speech by Vladimir Putin. (Photo: Sean Gallagher / Index on Censorship)
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=”top”][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”100 Years On” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2017%2F06%2F100-years-on%2F|||”][vc_column_text]Through a range of in-depth reporting, interviews and illustrations, the summer 2017 issue of Index on Censorship magazine explores how the consequences of the 1917 Russian Revolution still affect freedoms today, in Russia and around the world.
With: Andrei Arkhangelsky, BG Muhn, Nina Khrushcheva[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”91220″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/magazine”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1481888488328{padding-bottom: 50px !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
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Jonathan Tel is the 2016 winner of The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize and the 2015 Commonwealth short story prize. He has written both novels and short stories and has been published in The New Yorker and Granta, amongst others.
Nina Khrushcheva
Writer and academic
Nina Khrushcheva is professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York. She is the author of The Lost Khrushchev: A Journey into the Gulag of the Russian Mind, and is the great-grandchild of Nikita Khrushchev.
Rafael Marques de Morais
Journalist
Rafael Marques de Morais is an author and investigative journalist from Angola, who currently runs the anti-corruption website makaangola.org. He won the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award in 2015 for journalism.
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The Summer 2017 issue of Index on Censorship magazine looks at how the consequences of the 1917 Russian Revolution still affect freedoms today, in Russia and around the world. Andrei Arkhangelsky argues that the Soviet impulse to censor never left Russia, and Nina Khrushcheva, a great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, reflects on the Soviet echoes in Trump’s use of the phrase “enemies of the people”.
Hamid Ismailov, a writer who fled Uzbekistan in 1992, also reflects on how the superficial removal of the symbols of Soviet rule did little to change the mentality of the country or its government.
BG Muhn explores the legacy of socialist realism art in North Korea, arguably the only remaining totalitarian communist country, where painters work in government-run studios to produce artwork inspired by Soviet ideals and Korean pride. Also examining propaganda in art, David Aaronovitch looks back at the famous Soviet films he grew up watching, and asks whether their distortion of true events is any more sinister than that of Hollywood.
Jan Fox also interviews Luis LagoDiaz, a Cuban filmmaker, showing the global reach of Soviet influence, and Rafael Marques de Morais dissects the Stalin-inspired cult of personality surrounding the president of Angola.
Meanwhile, with eyes on history, Kaya Genç examines the complex relationship between Russia and Turkey, Bernard Gwertzman reflects on his time as the New York Times’ Moscow correspondent during the 1960s, and Duncan Tucker investigates how Leon Trotsky’s journey from founding Soviet leader to dissident non-person saw him become a champion of free speech during his exile in Mexico.
Outside of the special report, Laura Silvia Battaglia interviews a Yemeni journalist about his ordeal reporting on his country’s war, which has included being kidnapped, tortured and shot, and Eliza Vitri Handayani explains how a small rural community in Indonesia has found innovative ways of standing up to big industry, including encasing their feet in cement.
Plus Jemimah Steinfeld asks the author Margaret Atwood about current threats to free speech, the South African cartoonist Zapiro discusses the time President Jacob Zuma sued him and in the culture section award-winning writer Jonathan Tel presents a surreal, original short story about China’s ban on time-travelling television.
Friends reunited, by Kaya Genç: For most of the 20th century, Turkey and Russia were hostile neighbours. Now as both clamp down on free speech, they’re finding common ground
The big chill, by Bernard Gwertzman: Staged press conferences and tapped phones were two obstacles to reporting from Moscow during the Cold War for The New York Times’ correspondent
Help! I’m a Taiwanese communist, by Michael Gold: Taiwan went through a mass killing of its communists. Today the country is opening up about this dark past and communists face a freer environment
Shot in Havana, by Jan Fox: The state still controls Cuba’s film industry, but a Cuban producer is hopeful about changes ahead
Frenemies, by Kaya Genç: A mysterious man arrives at the White House. What does he want? A short story written exclusively for Index
Stitched in time, by Jonathan Tel: The award-winning writer on why the Chinese government controls historical narratives and an original story based on their ban of time travel shows
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SUBSCRIBE” css=”.vc_custom_1481736449684{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship magazine was started in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. Past contributors include Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquéz, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and many more.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”76572″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]In print or online. Order a print edition here or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions.
Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
[vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content” full_height=”yes” columns_placement=”stretch” equal_height=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1594032073955{background-image: url(https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/magazine-art-1460×490.png?id=80524) !important;}”][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Shakespearean actress Janet Suzman said about our special Shakespeare 400 issue: “From every corner of the unfree world the essays you have printed bear me out; theatre is a danger to ignorance and autocracy and Shakespeare still holds the sway. I congratulate you and Index on giving such space to a writer who is still bannable after 400 plus years.”” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
A quarterly magazine set up in 1972, Index has published oppressed writers and refused to be silenced across 252 issues.
The brainchild of the poet Stephen Spender, and translator Michael Scammell, the magazine’s very first issue included a never-before-published poem, written while serving a sentence in a labour camp, by the Nobel Prize-winning Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
The magazine continued to be a thorn in the side of Soviet censors, but its scope was far wider. From the beginning, Index declared its mission to stand up for free expression as a fundamental human right for people everywhere – it was particularly vocal in its coverage of the oppressive military regimes of southern Europe and Latin America, but was also clear that freedom of expression was not only a problem in faraway dictatorships. The winter 1979 issue, for example, reported on a controversy in the United States in which the Public Broadcasting Service had heavily edited a documentary about racism in Britain, and then gone to court attempting to prevent screenings of the original version.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left” color=”custom” align=”right” custom_color=”#dd3333″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”An archive of past battles won, and a beacon of present and future struggles. It’s unique brand of practical, practising advocacy is as necessary as ever.” font_container=”tag:h2|text_align:left|color:%23dd3333″ google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Index stood firmly against the apartheid regime. South African Nadine Gordimer, yet another Nobel prize-winning author, wrote regularly for the magazine. Big names from around the literary world flocked to contribute to the magazine, often before their struggles had brought internal accolade – a single issue in 1983 included the exiled Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, later a Nobel prize winner, and Czechoslovakian dissident Vaclav Havel, who went on to be his country’s last president before it split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Kurt Vonnegut and Arthur Miller were also among the more famous bylines. Salman Rushdie, the author at the centre of the Satanic Verses controversy, was frequently featured on Index’s pages while there was a bounty offered for his murder by the Iranian government.
After the fall of communism, there was a widespread misconception that censorship was “over”, but journalists, authors and dissidents have continually reached out to Index when squeezed. The Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya wrote in 2002 of the threats made against her life when she began investigating Russia’s war in Chechnya, four years before she was assassinated in Moscow.
After more than 40 years, Index continues to stand with the silenced all over the world. In October 2016, the Times Literary Supplement described it as “an archive of past battles won, and a beacon of present and future struggles. It’s unique brand of practical, practising advocacy is as necessary as ever.”
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Guests were invited to listen to actors performing excerpts from speeches by Lenin, Stalin and Putin. Guttenplan noted the speeches reminded him of the dialogue he hears in today’s political realm. “When we were listening to Lenin’s speech, I was thinking, well that doesn’t sound that different from John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn,” he said.
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