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bureaucracy, however, imperial censorship was not strictly enforced. It is astonishing to a person familiar with more recent forms of repression to learn that between 1867 and 1894 - a period spanning the very conservative reign of Alexander in - only 158 books were forbidden to circulate in Russia. Some 2 per cent of the manuscripts passed on by preliminary censorship in one decade were turned down. Censorship of foreign publications was also rather lax. Of the 93,565,260 copies of books and periodicals sent to Russia from abroad in one late nineteenth-century decade only 9,386 were stopped.8 All of which suggests that imperial censorship was more of a nuisance than a barrier to the free flow of ideas.
The Code of Laws, on which Speranskii had been working since the beginning of Nicholas's reign, came out in 1832. The Fifteenth Volume in this series contained the Criminal Code which embraced also offences against the state; but because it did nothing more than arrange in an orderly fashion the chaotic statutes issued until that date, including the 'two points' of 1715, it was immediately judged inadequate. Speranskii was asked to draft in its place a new systematic Criminal Code, but he died before completing the task which was taken over by D.N.Bludov. It finally came out in J 845. The new Criminal Code turned out to be a milestone in the historical evolution of the police state. Political crimes were dealt with in two chapters: No. 3 'Of felonies against the government', and No. 4 'Of felonies and misdemeanors against the system of administration'. These two sections, covering fifty-four printed pages, constitute a veritable constitutional charter of an authoritarian regime. Other continental countries also had on the statute books provisions, sometimes quite elaborate, for dealing with crimes against the state (a category of crime unknown to English and American jurisprudence); but none attached to them such importance or defined them as broadly and as loosely as did Russia. According to the 1845 Code:
1. All attempts to limit the authority of the sovereign, or to alter the prevailing system of government, as well as to persuade others to do so, or to give overt expression to such intentions, or to conceal, assist or fail to denounce anyone guilty of these offences, carried the death penalty and the confiscation of all property (Articles 263-65 and 271);
2. The spreading by word of mouth or by means of the written or printed word of ideas which, without actually inciting to sedition, as defined above, raised doubts about the authority of the sovereign or lessened respect for him of his office, were punishable by the loss of civil rights and terms of hard labour from four to twelve years, as well as corporal punishment and branding (Articles 267 and 274).
Chapters 3 and 4 of the Russian Criminal Code of 1845 are the fount-tainhead of all those misty generalizations which ever since have enabled
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the police of Russia and its dependencies, as well as countries which have emulated its system of government, perfectly lawfully to stifle all manifestations of political dissent. Since 1845, with but one interlude between October 1905 and October 1917, it has been a crime in Russia not only to seek changes in the existing system of government or administration, but even to raise questions about such issues. Politics has been declared by law a monopoly of those in power; the patrimonial spirit, for centuries a nebulous feeling, has here at long last been given flesh in neatly composed chapters, articles and paragraphs. Particularly innovative in these provisions is the failure to distinguish deed from intent - a blurring of degrees of guilt characteristic of modern police states. While the 'raising of doubts' about the existing political system was recognized as a lesser offence than efforts actually to change it, it was still treated as a very serious crime and penalized by hard labour, beating, and branding. Since 1845, Russian Criminal Codes have each contained a political 'omnibus' clause worded with such imprecision that under its terms the organs of state security have been able to incarcerate citizens guilty of crimes no more specific than intent to 'weaken', 'undermine' or 'arouse doubts' or 'disrespect' for existing authority. A juxtaposition of such clauses from three consecutive Criminal Codes - 1845, 1927 and i960 gives an instructive demonstration of the continuity of the police mentality in Russia irrespective of the nature of the regime: Code of 1845, Articles 267 and 274:
Persons guilty of writing and spreading written or printed works or representations intended to arouse disrespect for Sovereign Authority, or for the personal qualities of the Sovereign, or for his government are on conviction sentenced, as offenders of Majesty, to the deprivation of all rights of property and exile for hard labour in fortified places from ten to twelve years... Those who participate in the preparation of such works or representations or their distribution with criminal intent are subject to the same punishment. Those guilty of preparing works or images of such nature but not of their distribution with criminal intent are sentenced for this act, as one of criminal intent, to incarceration in a fortress from two to four years... For the preparation and distribution of written or printed works or for public pronouncements in which, without there being direct and clear incitement to rebellion against Sovereign Authority, there is an effort to dispute or raise doubts about the inviolability of its rights or impudently to censure the system of administration established by state laws... the guilty persons are sentenced to loss of all rights of property and exile for hard labour in factories from four to six years...10 Soviet (RSFSR) Code of 1927, Article 58, (1) and (10):
As counter-revolutionary are defined all actions directed at the overthrow, undermining or weakening [of the government]... or the undermining or
TOWARDS THE POLICE STATE
weakening... of the basic economic, political, and national [policies of the Soviet state]... Propaganda or agitation, containing appeals to the overthrow, undermining or weakening of Soviet authority... and equally the spread or preparation or safeguarding of literature of such content carry the loss of freedom with strict isolation of no fewer than six months... " Soviet (RSFSR) Code of i960, Article 70:
Agitation or propaganda carried on for the purpose of subverting or weakening Soviet authority or of committing particular, especially dangerous crimes against the state, or circulating for the same purpose slanderous fabrications which defame the Soviet state and social system, or circulating or preparing or keeping, for the same purpose, literature of such content, shall be punished by the deprivation of freedom for a term of six months to seven years, with or without additional exile for a term of two to five years, or by exile for a term of two to five years... 12 This type of legislation, and the police institutions created to enforce it, spread after the Revolution of 1917 by way of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to other authoritarian states in Europe and overseas. One is justified in saying, therefore, that Chapters Three and Four of the Russian Criminal Code of 1845 are to totalitarianism what the Magna Carta is to liberty.