In this issue, Index investigates how human rights are respected in the United States.
Human rights in the USA
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CATEGORY: Magazine
Introduction to the special Soviet issue
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] By Michael Scammell Ever since Index on Censorship started publication eight years ago (and of course for many decades before that) the Soviet Union has been the world’s leading exponent of techniques of...
USSR
In this issue, Index examines the machinery of repression and control through authors who lived most or all of their lives in the Soviet Union.
Introduction to special issue on Africa
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] By Ahmed Rajab We devote a large part of this issue to dissent in literature and the arts in Africa, and the response to it by the ruling circles in a number of countries. This may seem an ambitious project in...
Africa & Argentina
In this issue, Index examines dissent in literature and the arts in Africa, and the response to it by the ruling circles in a number of countries.
The rebirth of Chilean cinema in exile
In this issue, Malcolm Coad examines the gradual revival of Chilean film by exiled film-makers after seven years of military rule
China: In Mao’s cave
In this issue, Index examines the Chinese Communist Party’s cultural policy since its accession to power in 1949.
Poland: Breaking the state monopoly
In this issue, a leading Polish writer sees censorship as ‘the most important social problem today.’
China: Unofficial texts
In this issue, Index publishes the 19 points of the most important document to come out of China during the brief liberalisation at the beginning of this year.
Brazil
In this issue, Index examines the effect of fifteen years of military government on the Brazilian press and the arts.
A quarterly journal set up in 1972, Index on Censorship magazine has published oppressed writers and refused to be silenced across hundreds of 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 Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who went on to win a Nobel prize later that year.
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. Learn more.