Description of Incident: After World War I there was a period of unrest in Italy which saw a number of worker revolts and movements. The workers faced defeat after a worker occupation from 1919-1920 and Gramsci saw the opportunity for a reorganization of Italian socialists. In 1921 the Italian Communist Party was formed. In 1922 the fascists gained control of the government and arrested communist leaders. Gramsci escaped arrest because he was in the Soviet Union representing his party at the Communist International. In 1924 Gramsci was elected to the parliament on the Communist Party ticket and was selected as the new leader of the party. In 1926 special laws were passed by the fascists in defense of the state and all opposition parties were outlawed and their leaders arrested. Gramsci was sentenced to twenty years in prison and ended up dying in jail in 1937 as a result of poor health that was exacerbated by bad prison conditions. "Prison Notebooks" was translated by Gramsci's successor as head of the Italian Communist Party, Palmiro Togliatti, and the strategy outlined in the books was very popular and successful until the late 1970s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union Gramsci's theories became almost obsolete. Togliatti's interpretation of "Prison Notebooks" was a political reconstruction that amounted to a form of censorship. It has been argued that in "Prison Notebooks" Gramsci was not only questioning the approaches of the Communists, but also the results.

Results of Incident: A critical edition of "Prison Notebooks" did not appear until 1975 and a new national critical edition is being planned. Gramsci's works were never popular in the Soviet Union because of the distinction Gramsci made in his theories between the east and the west. In the west his writings are still viewed with suspicion for being too close to communism.

Description of Incident: When working for the "Buenos Aires Herald" Graham-Yooll was first arrested by the government of general Juan Carlos Ogania. From that time on he was branded as a communist and faced death threats and attempts on his life. He became the official contact for Amnesty International in Argentina. His books documenting political events were deemed subversive by the government. In 1976 Graham-Yooll went into exile in Europe with his family. At that time he was on criminal trial under a security law that classified the publication of guerrilla information and other political offenses as subversive. Graham-Yooll was brought to trial for an interview he did of the leadership of the People's Revolutionary Army and for participating in a guerrilla press conference. He was acquitted in 1977 but remained in exile in London. Many of his friends in Argentina were dead, missing, or exiled.

Results of Incident: In 1989 Graham-Yooll became the editor of "Index on Censorship". In 1994 he returned to Buenos Aires to become editor-in-chief of the "Buenos Aires Herald". His book "A State of Fear: Memories of Argentina's Nightmare" documented his life as a censored journalist under Argentina's totalitarian government.

Description of Incident: "Maja desnuda" and "Maja vestida" were both held in the "private cabinet" of the disgraced former chief minister of Spain, Manuel de Godoy. Godoy was hated in Spain for both his decadence and his part in Spain's collapse during the Napoleonic wars, which led to the abolition of the Inquisition by the French monarch, Joseph Bonaparte. When Bonaparte was deposed and the Inquisition was reinstated the Inquisitors were only too happy to bring to light Godoy's seedy habits, including the two paintings by Goya. The paintings were also considered especially scandalous because in the prudish, religious Spanish culture the nude was hardly ever portrayed in art. There had also been a recent surge in the popularity of pornography which the Inquisition was alarmed about. Goya was summoned to appear before the Inquisition to explain the works. The Inquisition, however, was not as powerful as it had been before the Napoleonic Wars, and it seems that Goya might have chosen to not appear before the Inquisition because there is no further mention of him in the Inquisition records. In 1925 Goya received a request for a copy of his satirical court portrait "Los Caprichos". In Goya's reply he wrote "...they nevertheless accused me before the Inquisition, not would I copy them myself..." The glancing reference to censorship is taken by some to mean the work was censored, although it is more commonly accepted that Goya was referring to the censorship of the "Maja" paintings, which may have made him less popular with the royal court.

Results of Incident: The "Majas" paintings were taken to the Royal Academy sometime after the Inquisition was abolished and its assets distributed in 1835. "The Clothed Maja" was kept in another "private cabinet" for a number of years and "The Nude Maja" was not available for viewing until a Goya exhibit in 1900. In 1901 both paintings were acquired by the Prado.

Description of Incident: In 1901 "Song of the Stormy Petrel" was censored for being seditious. The following year he was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences and Letters, only for his election to be annulled on the orders of emperor Nicholas II. Korolenko and Chekhov resigned in protest. "The Confession" was Gor'kii's attempt to found a new popular religion, reconciling socialism and Christianity. This earned the disapproval of Lenin and the Bolsheviks and later was censored for being politically incorrect. During the first Russian revolution from 1905-1906 Gor'kii was arrested and imprisoned and his work was censored and restricted. For five years Gor'kii lived in exile in Italy. When he returned in 1913 he began to criticize the Bolsheviks for their increasingly dictatorial policies. Gor'kii's opposition to the trial and execution of political opponents led the Bolsheviks to close his publishing house and journal "New Times". After this Gor'kii again went into exile in Italy, this time for ten years. During this time he continued his criticism of Bolshevik censorship, especially the campaign led by Lenin's wife to purge libraries of anti-Soviet works. In 1931 Gor'kii returned to the Soviet Union on the request of Stalin, who saw the propaganda potential in having Gor'kii in Russia. There were large celebrations upon his return and he was named the chairman of the Writer's Union, hailed as the pioneer of socialist realism, and his novel "Mother" was given as the ideal socialist realism work. In order to maintain this cozy relationship with Stalin Gor'kii became a willing practitioner of self-censorship. Two articles he wrote for the publication "News" attacked Soviet journalists who wrote negative things about the government, saying they were only comforting the "enemies of socialism".

Results of Incident: This self-censorship practiced by Gor'kii called into question his legacy as a writer against censorship. Gor'kii died under somewhat mysterious circumstances in 1936, partly due to health complications resulting from a suicide attempt when he was young. Although most believe the death was natural Stalin used it as a pretext for the arrest and execution of the head of the Soviet secret police.

Description of Incident: The first case of censorship Nadine Gordimer faced was in 1966 when the South African government banned her book "The Late Bourgeois World". In June 1979 "Burger's Daughter" was published. A month after the book was published the Publications Committee banned the book because they found it offensive on moral, religious, and political grounds. The Committee felt that the novel portrayed the reality of South African society too accurately and that this made the book subversive. This report on the novel was widely criticized and Gordimer herself wrote a critique and account of the censorship in "What Happened to Burger's Daughter or How South African Censorship Works". In a strange turn of events the Publication Committee's own director appealed the ban and appointed a panel of literary experts to asses the merit of the novel. As a result of their findings the Appeal Board suggested that the book was too one-sided to be subversive. This was not, however, a total victory. In the "Essential Gesture", a 1988 book by Gordimer, she points out that at the same time this decision was made two books by black authors were banned. The Committee also reversed the ban in an attempt to ease tensions between authors and the government. The censorship hurt Gordimer and "Burger's Daughter" by forcing Gordimer to downplay the political significance of the novel. Gordimer was also been transformed into a pawn of the government who used her as a supposed sign to the international community that they were relaxing censorship. Gordimer felt that the relaxation of censorship on the her works and the works of other white authors was an attempt to draw a divide between balck and white authors.

Results of Incident: In 1991 Gordimer won the Nobel Prize. In April 2001 she again faced censorship when Guanteg education department evaluators removed her book "July's People" from the province's reading list.

Description of Incident: Gogol' wrote "Dead Souls" from 1840-1841 while living in Rome. In 1841 he returned to Russia to oversee the publication of the book. Gogol' himself was certain that the book would be published without a problem. When he submitted the book to the censors in late 1841, however, the book was deemed unworthy of publication and banned. The Censorship Committee had five objections to the text. The first was Gogol's use of the word soul, which the censors felt violated the church doctrine on the immortality of the soul. Their other objections were to Gogol's blatant attack of the fuedal system, the representation of a criminal as a hero, the cheapening of human life, and certain allusions which they felt were a direct attack on the emperor. Gogol' then sent the book to St. Petersburg where he had generated support among other writers. A friend of Gogol's gave "Dead Souls" to Nikitenko, who was regarded as the most liberal censor. In March of 1842 Nikitenko approved the book, but with about 30 changes in wording required. One of these was the changing of the title to add "Chichikov's Adventures" before the original title. Gogol' accepted this but designed the title page so that the first part was in much smaller type. Nikitenko also asked that Gogol' revise a subplot called the "Story of Captain Kopeikin". After doing so the novel was accepted and was published a month later.

Results of Incident: Gogol's wariness of censors led him to willingly self-censor his future works. A second edition of the book was published in 1846 with an author's preface. Gogol' died 10 years after the first publication fo "Dead Souls" and Russian officials did their best to prevent public tributes to him.

Description of Incident: In 1957 The United States Custom Bureau seized 500 copies of Ginsberg's book "Howl and Other Poems" as they were being returned to the publisher, City Lights, in San Fransisco from the printers in London. The owner of City Lights, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, informed the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) whose lawyers told the US Attorney in San Fransisco that they were going to fight the obscenity charge being brought against the book. The books were then released. A few months later two police officers working on orders from the San Fransisco police department bought a copy of the book from City Lights and then issued an arrest warrant for Ferlinghetti for publishing obscene material. The ACLU again came to his defense and the judge acquitted Ferlinghetti, dismissing the use of the word obscene to describe "Howl" because the book had "redeeming social importance". In 1959 The Chicago Review published some of Ginsberg's poems. The Review's sponsors then said the journal must withdraw material from other beat writers set to appear in their next issue. The editors resigned and with Ginsberg's help they were able to put out the repressed issue under a new name. By 1965 Ginsberg had gained international notoriety for his drug use and homosexuality and while traveling abroad he found his visa terminated in Czechoslovakia and India for his "immoral" writing. In 1984 Ginsberg found himself among a list of blacklisted speakers held by the US Information Agency as a public figure banned from government sponsored speaking engagements because of his liberal views. In 1988 Ginsberg again had to defend "Howl" from the censors when the Federal Communications Commissions prohibited the reading of the poem on the radio before midnight.

Results of Incident: Ginsberg was always an outspoken critic of censorship. He was a member of PEN Freedom-to-Write Committee and eventually became vice-president.

Description of Incident: Napoleon III had an unstable dictatorship, and throughout his rule he feared dissent of any kind. In 1852 he instated harsh controls for the press and required censorship in particular for caricatures. After Gill published the caricature of Napoleon III disguised as Rocambole the publication it appeared in, La Lune, was suppressed. Gill and the rest of the journal's staff regrouped and founded L'Eclipse in 1868. Between 1868 and 1870 at least 25 of Gill's cartoons were forbidden to be published in L'Eclipse by the censors. After Gill was able to slip in the caricature of the judge as a cantaloupe the authorities were at a loss. They prosecuted Gill with obscenity and the absurd case was quickly dismissed. After Napoleon III's regime collapsed in 1870 Gill continued to wage war against the monarchy with his cartoons. During a 28 month period between 1871 and 1873 37 of Gill's cartoons were censored. Many felt that these illustrations helped to discredit the regime.

Results of Incident: The republicans obtained electoral victories in 1877 and 1879 and ironically, this led to a decline in the popularity of republican cartoons. Gill lost his fame and spent his last years in a mental hospital.

Description of Incident: The Nazi campaign against degenerate music sought to end the careers of degenerate musicians, abolish independent music organizations, remove degenerate repertoire from concert halls and opera houses, and install ministers of music propaganda sympathetic to Nazi ideals. In 1933 the attack on music began with the Civil Service Restoration Act which allowed the authorities to dismiss any non-Aryan or politically suspect musician who was employed wither as a teacher at State Music Conservatory or as a performer in an opera house or music hall. Within the first months of Nazi rule many prominent musicians left Germany, including Schoenberg. The Nazis then seized control of the national broadcasting system and jazz was banned from the airwaves. A telegram sent from American musicians to Hitler in protest of this act led to the boycott of their recordings as well. Music critics and journalists who sympathized with modernism were also removed from their jobs. In November of that same year the Reich Chamber of Music was introduced. If you wanted to make a living as a musician you had to obtain membership to this group. In 1937 after charges of having a degenerate repertoire, Goebbels shut down the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein music festival and established in its place the Reichmusiktage. During this time censorship of music intensified and local music organizers were assigned to monitor music in every town. In May of 1938 Hans Severus Ziegler organized the Entartete Musik, which ridiculed the work of degenerate composers. When Austria and Czechoslovakia were invaded that year Nazi cultural policies were instated and many musicians were sent to concentration camps.

Results of Incident: Many of the musicians who left Germany during the Nazi era found it hard to work in their new environment and some found their careers ended. In the 1970s many of these composers were rediscovered. In the 1990s a series of CDs came out called Entartete Musik, which featured the works of the musicians that were persecuted under the Nazis.

Description of Incident: In "Mein Kampf" Hitler promised that once in power "Theater, art, literature, cinema, press...must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea." In 1933 the attack began with the Professional Civil Service Restoration Act which enabled officials to dismiss non-Aryan practitioners of the arts and confiscate their art in order to "purify" German culture. It was during 1933 that the first exhibitions of degenerate art were held to highlight the "cultural collapse" that the Nazis were going to free Germany from. Hitler saw this attack on modern art as a way of building on the average German's suspicions of the avant-garde to further Nazi objectives against non-Aryans and communists. In 1937 Joseph Goebbels made a decree giving Adolf Ziegler and a five man commission the authority to visit all major German art museums and select works for an exhibition of degenerate art in Munich. They originally selected 700 works from 28 different cities and 32 different museums. The commission then revisited the museums and selected more works to make the total 16,000 works from 1,400 different artists which were shipped to Berlin. This plunder continued until 1938 and was legalized in May of 1938. The Entartete Kunst exhibit of degenerate art opened in July of 1937, the day after the opening of the Grosse deutsche Kunstaustellung, which brought together art that was supposed to demonstrate the triumph of German art in the Third Reich. The art in this exhibition was mainly mediocre genre paintings. The degenerate art not included in Entartete Kunst were stored in a warehouse in Berlin. Those works which could be sold outside Germany for substantial sums were sent to another warehouse where the price was set for the sale of the works. The Entartete Kunst was a chaotic exhibit where the works were vaguely organized into thematic groupings such as religion, Jewish artists, and the vilification of women. Under each work were labels saying how much money the museums had spent to acquire the piece. Quotes and slogans by Nazi critics were written across the walls. During the four months the exhibit was in Munich it attracted more than 2 million visitors and during the next three years it traveled throughout Germany and Austria and attracted more than one million visitors.

Results of Incident: Every piece of art from Germany done before 1933 was censored. The censorship only ended with the collapse of the Nazi regime.

Description of Incident: The first censorship Berlanga faced was actually from Americans. At the Cannes Film Festival the publicity for the film "Bienvenido, Mr. Marshall" included handing out dollar bills in which George Washington's face was replaced with the face of the main character in the play. The president of the jury at Cannes was Edward G. Robinson, an American who had recently been pursued by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and he was trying to make himself out to be a patriot. He condemned the movie as anti-American. "Los Jueves, milagro" was first rejected by the Church representative on the censorship junta. Berlanga made some changes, but they were not enough to satisfy the censors. A final scene was added which suggested the whole story had been a dream and with this addition the movie was finally passed. In 1961 censors insisted that Berlanga change the title of "Seat a Poor Person at Your Table" to "Placido", because they were sensitive to any reference of Spanish poverty. "El Verdugo" was the final straw. After the making of that movie Berlanga was called unpatriotic and forced to work abroad.

Results of Incident: After "El Verdugo", Berlanga only made three other movies during Franco's lifetime.

Description of Incident: In 1973, after a military dictatorship came into power in Uruguay, Galeano was forced into exile in Argentina. In Argentina he founded the publication "Crisis", which was cesored and confiscated by the military for "nonprofessional opinions". In 1976 Galeano left for Spain. While in Spain he wrote "The Open Veins of Latin America" and "Memory of Fire" which were censored in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. After these encounters with censorship Galeano became a voice in the struggle against state sponsored censorship.

Results of Incident: Galeano continues to write articles speaking out against neoliberalism and in favor of socialism.

Description of Incident: The authorities were immediately concerned by the Free People's Theater and Emperor William II ordered an investigation into the association. However, because the theater was private and only offered performances for members the Berlin police told him it could not be subject to censorship. In 1891 the police invoked the Prussian associations law against the Free People's Theater, saying that since it sought to influence public affairs they must notify the police of all their meetings and members. The Theater appealed the ruling and won. The decision was then quickly overturned by the Higher Administrative Court saying that the theater must notify the police of its members and meetings since its main purpose was political. The court also said that the Free People's Theater was not a political group meaning that the group was officially recognized and the police could not legally censor them. Later that year the theater split into two factions, the New Free People's Theater, which was more artistically oriented, and the Free People's Theater, which was more politically oriented. As the membership of both groups grew the police began complaining that both were in actuality giving performances to the public. In 1893 both groups gave performances of "The Weavers" and in 1895 a government reaction against this play led the police to move against the theaters. The police then decreed that since obtaining membership to the theaters was so easy they must be subject to censorship. The theaters appealed and the Higher Administrative Court ruled with the police. The New Free People's Theater reacted by tightening their membership qualifications and the Free People's Theater decided to disband rather than be subjected to police censorship. However within a year the Free People's Theater was refounded on terms that were more agreeable to the police. In 1910 after the theaters had announced they would be offering a wider variety of entertainments to their members the police again intervened. Both theaters were again declared public and again both appealed and again the appeals were rejected. From then on the police acted as censors of the theaters but the only performance they actually banned was a 1912 production about impoverished miners called "Those Who Live in the Shadows". In 1912 the Free People's Theater put on a production of "Storm over Gotland" in which the characters were changed to represent Nazis and communists. A film interlude that amplified the politics of the performance was cut by the management of the theater after criticism from the press. This self-censorship led many famous artistic and literary figures of the time to rally in support of artistic expression. In 1929 the police closed down several plays for supposedly threatening law and order. In 1933 when the Nazis came into power the theaters became tools of the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. In 1945 the New Free People's Theater found itself in the Soviet part of Berlin and was subject to communist censorship until the collapse of the German Democratic Republic in 1989. Meanwhile, the Free People's Theater set up a new theater with its own company. The public subsidy for the theater was withdrawn in 1989 and it no longer produced plays.

Results of Incident: In 2001 the Free People's Theater became the House of Berlin Festivals. The New Free People's Theater, now the Volksbuhne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz is still a flourishing theater under Frank Castorf, as a avant-garde, anti-capitalist, state subsidized theater.

Description of Incident: Originally WNYC had agreed to host "Days of Rage" for a broadcast on June 5, 1989, the twenty-second anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. WNYC thought it would be necessary to have a panel discussion after the broadcast with "additional context" provided, especially on the Israeli side. While the network was putting together the panel the Israeli embassy got a copy of the tape and it began circulating both in the United States and in Israel. Local and national Jewish-American groups began to lobby their local public television stations to get the broadcast canceled. WNYC then pulled its sponsorship of the documentary calling it "propaganda". A prominent television critic, Howard Rosenberg, of the Los Angeles Times, then wrote a column praising the documentary. In his article Rosenberg suggested that WNYC might have cut the program because there are a large number of Jewish-Americans in New York who they depend on for donations. Arab-American groups then began campaigning to get the documentary put back on the air.

Results of Incident: Finally they decided to air "Days of Rage" in a special package. Hodding Carter, assistant secretary of state was the host and led the panel so as to try to neutralize any controversial views in the film.

Description of Incident: In 1958 Franco's first experience with censorship occurred when his song "Mukoko", about freedom, was withdrawn from sale by Belgian colonial officials. In 1965, five years after Zaire won independence, the repressive Colonel Mobutu ordered the public execution of five dissident intellectuals. Franco's song "Luvumbu the Sorcerer" was a commentary on these executions. The song was banned as soon as it was released and copies not only in Zaire, but also in Europe, were hunted down. Franco walked a thin line in Zaire, not many dissidents could escape the persecution of Colonel Mobutu. His popularity helped keep him out of prison. However when "Helene" and "Jacky" were released Franco was ordered to explain himself to the attorney general. Franco said he did not think the songs were obscene and his mother was called in to make the judgment. Predictably Franco's mother was shocked and the songs were banned and Franco along with the other 10 members of his band OK Jazz were sentenced to two months in prison. In addition Franco had to return his medal for the Ordre National de Leopard, Zaire's top honor.

Results of Incident: "Helene" and "Jacky" remain banned on moral grounds.