“…According to the stipulations of the emperor's edict (vysochaishego poveleniia) of May 18, 1876 and its amendment from October 8, 1881, the only texts that were allowed to be published in the "Little Russian dialect" were historical documents which including the preservation of the original orthography, dictionaries, and original fiction (translations were forbidden) following the rules of Russian orthography. Thus, the abovementioned brochure on the Sahara by Borys Hrinchenko was banned because even though it "did not contain anything opposite the censorship rules, it 13 Technically one might date the appearance of Ukrainian public sphere in the empire by 1905, when the Ems Edict, which was never formally repealed, lost its power after the October Manifesto granted freedom of speech to the population of the empire. From then on, the Ukrainian press could be published without asking for prior permission from the censorship committee.…”