THE SOVIET HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE QUESTION OF KAZAKHSTAN’S HISTORY

THE QUESTION OF KAZAKHSTAN’S HISTORY 173
publications; nevertheless, until the collapse of Soviet Union, the name
GLAVLIT was used for this organization by historians and scientists.
GLAVLIT was a dependent unit of the Publications Committee, which
was a part of Ministers Council of the Soviet Union. It would permit and
control the activities of publishing houses, approve their publication
management, and control the suitability of the work contents to the
Party’s ideology and management; in other words, GLAVLIT was a guard
of Party’s ideology on publications. 311 The publications of all republican
publishing houses that were dependent to the center were planned and
verified by GLAVLIT. The main obstacle in publishing the works of scientists
and historians was GLAVLIT, despite the fact that scientific studies
of the Academy of Science were formally excluded from the influence
of this institution. GLAVLIT would examine the works repeatedly. The
censorship observer examined the author copies, correction copies, printed
samples of works and made evaluations on the ideological aspects
of works. The censorship observer would suggest “the elimination of
shortcomings in ideological evaluation” and the “replacement of useless
information”. At the same time, they could suggest changes to some
words, paragraphs and section titles, or completely remove the work.
The information about notes was transferred to the publishing director
by common implications; the director explained the situation to writer,
after which the writer made corrections. But, the writer never saw the
censorship observer’s notes taken during the review.
Therefore, writers could only see amendments in their works after
they were published. Typically, to quote the party leaders’ writings in
their works served as a guarantee to be accepted for print or signified
insurance for the works. 312
Confirmation was transferred in the following way to an author’s
manuscript: “There is no disclosure of military and state secret”, to
corrections of an historian “Publication is allowed”, and to the first
sample print “Print is permitted”. Only after these stages, the publication
of the work would be realized. In case of nonfulfillment, the
censorship observer’s suggestions for correction to the works would
not be included in the publication list and were delayed for years in
publishing houses. 313 Without GLAVLIT’s affirmation, it was impossible
to publish the work. 314 GLAVLIT’s provincial duties were fulfilled by
311 Look for first period works of GLAVLIT: “ГЛАВЛИТ”, Литерaтурнaя
Энциклопедия в 11 томaх. Том 2, Moscow 1930.
312 Gurevich, ibid, p. 23.
313 Ibid, p. 95
314 Tvardovskaya, ibid, p. 63.