Editing Index on Censorship (section)

== Founding history ==
{{more citations needed|section|date=August 2021}}

===An Appeal from the USSR===

The original impetus for the creation of ''Index on Censorship'' came from an Open Letter addressed "To World Public Opinion" by two Soviet dissenters, [[Pavel Litvinov]] and [[Larisa Bogoraz]]. In the words of the [[samizdat]] periodical ''[[A Chronicle of Current Events]]'', they described "the atmosphere of illegality" surrounding the January 1968 [[Trial of the Four|trial of Ginzburg and Galanskov]] and called for "public condemnation of this disgraceful trial, for the punishment of those responsible, the release of the accused from detention and a retrial which would fully conform with the legal regulations and be held in the presence of international observers."<ref>[https://chronicle-of-current-events.com/2013/09/25/1-2-protests-about-the-trial/ see "Protests about Galanskov-Ginzburg trial", ''A Chronicle of Current Events'', (1.2, 30 April 1968)].</ref> (One of the accused [[Alexander Ginzburg]] resumed his dissident activities on release from the camps, until expelled from the USSR in 1979; another, the writer [[Yuri Galanskov]], died in a camp in November 1972.)

''The Times'' (London) published a translation of the Open Letter and in reply the English poet [[Stephen Spender]] composed a brief telegram:

<blockquote>“We, a group of friends representing no organisation, support your statement, admire your courage, think of you and will help in any way possible.”<ref name="Matsui 2019 pp. 77–89">{{cite journal | last=Matsui | first=Yasuhiro | title=Forming a Transnational Moral Community between Soviet Dissidents and Ex-Communist Western Supporters: The Case of Pavel Litvinov, Karel van het Reve and Stephen Spender | journal=Contemporary European History | publisher=Cambridge University Press (CUP) | volume=29 | issue=1 | date=2019-11-13 | issn=0960-7773 | doi=10.1017/s096077731900016x | pages=77–89| s2cid=210508133 }}</ref></blockquote>

Among the other 15 British and US signatories were the poet [[W. H. Auden]],<ref name="Matsui 2019 pp. 77–89"/> philosopher [[A. J. Ayer]],{{citation needed|date=October 2022}} musician [[Yehudi Menuhin]],{{citation needed|date=October 2022}} man of letters [[J. B. Priestley]],{{citation needed|date=October 2022}} actor [[Paul Scofield]],{{citation needed|date=October 2022}} sculptor [[Henry Moore]],{{citation needed|date=October 2022}} philosopher [[Bertrand Russell]],<ref name="Matsui 2019 pp. 77–89"/> writer [[Mary McCarthy (author)|Mary McCarthy]]{{citation needed|date=October 2022}} and composer [[Igor Stravinsky]].<ref name="Matsui 2019 pp. 77–89"/>

Later that year, on 25 August, Bogoraz, Litvinov and five others demonstrated on [[1968 Red Square demonstration|Red Square]] against the [[invasion of Czechoslovakia]].<ref name="Matsui 2019 pp. 77–89"/>

A few weeks before, Litvinov sent Spender a letter (translated and published several years later in the first May 1972 issue of ''Index''). He suggested that a regular publication might be set up in the West "to provide information to world public opinion about the real state of affairs in the USSR".{{Citation needed|date=October 2022}}

===Title, scope and relations with Amnesty International===
Spender and his colleagues, Stuart Hampshire, David Astor, Edward Crankshaw and founding editor Michael Scammell decided, like Amnesty International, to cast their net wider. They wished to document patterns of censorship in right-wing dictatorships — the military regimes of Latin America and the dictatorships in Greece, Spain and Portugal — as well as the Soviet Union and its satellites.<ref name="theiner" />

Meanwhile, in 1971, [[Amnesty International]] began to publish English translations of each new issue of ''[[A Chronicle of Current Events]]'', which documented human rights abuses in the USSR and included a regular "Samizdat Update". In a recent interview, Michael Scammell explains the informal division of labour between the two London-based organisations: "When we received human rights material we forwarded it to Amnesty and when Amnesty received a report of censorship they passed it on to us".<ref>[https://www.colta.ru/articles/literature/25103-maykl-skemmel-vospominaniya-pavel-litvinov-indeks-tsenzury#i "Pavel Litvinov and the Creation of ''Index on Censorship''", Colta.ru, 8 August 2020] (in Russian).</ref>

Originally, as suggested by Scammell, the magazine was to be called ''Index'', a reference to the lists or indices of banned works that are central to the history of censorship: the Roman Catholic Church's [[Index Librorum Prohibitorum]] (Index of Forbidden Books); the Soviet Union's ''Censor's Index''; and apartheid South Africa's ''Jacobsens Index of Objectionable Literature''.<ref name="theiner" />

Scammell later admitted that the words "on censorship" were added as an afterthought when it was realised that the reference would not be clear to many readers. "Panicking, we hastily added the words 'on Censorship' as a subtitle", wrote Scammell in the December 1981 issue of the magazine, "and this it has remained ever since, nagging me with its ungrammaticality (Index ''of'' Censorship, surely) and a standing apology for the opacity of its title."{{Citation needed|date=October 2022}}

Describing the organisation's objectives at its inception, Stuart Hampshire said:

<blockquote>"the tyrant's concealments of oppression and of absolute cruelty should always be challenged. There should be noise of publicity outside every detention centre and concentration camp and a published record of every tyrannical denial of free expression."{{Citation needed|date=October 2022}}</blockquote>