Russian Empire
The Russian Empire, also known as Imperial Russia or simply Russia, was an empire that existed across Eurasia and North America from 1721, following the end of the Great Northern War, until the Republic was proclaimed by the Provisional Government that took power after the February Revolution of 1917.
Censorship in the Russian Empire
The history of censorship in the Russia began long before the emergence of the empire. The first book containing an index of prohibited works dates to the year 1073, in Kievan Rus. For several centuries these were mere translations of censorship lists from other languages; the first authentic old Russian censorship index was created only in the fourteenth century. The number of indices (as well as illegal publications) increased steadily until the beginning of the sixteenth century. Censorship first attained a kind of official status in the period of the Tsardom (1547–1721): it was encoded in law in the "Stoglav" and was directed against heresies, schisms, and other alleged deviations from religious dogmas and sacred texts.