Stranica istorii sovetskoj cenzury: literaturnyj al’manach ‘Metropol’’

When Brezhenev was in office, it was a time characterized by stability in the political system but rapidly evolving changes in civil society. Censorship, which functioned only with archaic methods, was unable to face the new cultural forms which were spreading throughout the country. And when, during the Seventies, censorship tried to adopt more up-to-date practices which privileged surveillance over punishment, it failed. The ‘Metropol’ affair shows that the changes which took place in the system of Soviet censorship during «stagnation» were only superficial, and that the Soviet structure, in spite of those attempts to reorganise, preserved, in its essence, an inquisitorial character.