The Third Section

Points of View – Sites of Conflict: Dissimulation as Protective Disguise

“…These repercussions were most obvious in the Tsarist government's attitude to the control of information and its suppression of any secretive groups, whether seditious or apolitical. The 'Third Section' of the Tsar's Chancery was reorganised in 1826 with Count Benckendorff at its head, and with a new gendarmerie at its back, 5 precisely with this suppression in mind. Censorship reflected this mood, as realised in the 'cast-iron statute', drafted by Shirinsky and proposed to Tsar Nicholas by Admiral Shishkov in 1826.…”

“…42 As Savinitch observes, the Censorship Regulations of 1828 generously prescribed that censors 'should always assume the evident meaning as its base'. 43 Under the relatively benign oversight of the Third Section run by Benckendorff and von Vock, 44 this may have been an appropriate dissimulative technique for writers to use as a weapon with which to engage the regime, but the Soviet government after the Civil War was a horse of a very different colour . .…”