ABSTRACT
Laws against obscenity and immorality almost always refer to "works propagandizing immorality." This phrasing is more than a simple casual word choice. It is an overt decision to believe that artistic works can act upon people and corrupt them. While events of the nineteenth century would gradually politicize the censorship apparatus in tsarist Russia, the concern over obscenity continued to fall largely under alleged "moral" criteria. The censorship statute of 1804, it will be recalled, instructed censors to examine books to ascertain "that there is nothing in them opposed to the laws of God, government, morality, and the personal honor of every single citizen." The control of pornography in tsarist Russia was first directly legislated under Article 1001. This article for the legislation of "good morals" appeared in 1845 as part of the extensive penal revisions of that year, was revised in 1865, and was adapted several times later as the censorship laws changed.
