Putin Officials Now Censoring Nudity in Films Even Soviet Censors Allowed, Belanovsky Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 28 – As part of Vladimir Putin’s campaign to defend traditional family values, Russian officials are now eliminating or blurring nudity in Soviet-era films that Soviet censors had allowed to be shown, Sergey Belanovsky says, an effort that is worrisome because it marks the beginning of even more censorship to come.

            The prominent Moscow sociologist says this latest “idiocy” of Russian officialdom came to mind when he saw the rebroadcast of a Soviet film that contained brief views of a woman’s breasts. In the new release, those breasts were obscured by Vaseline so that one could not tell what they were (newizv.ru/news/society/28-11-2022/novaya-nenavist-k-telu-v-chem-rossiyskaya-tsenzura-uzhe-prevzoshla-sovetskuyu).

            But what makes this “idiocy” worrisome is that “someone and at what level was not too lazy to carefully watch this stupid [Soviet-era] film and instruct the use of Vaseline to obscure the corresponding frames.” And what that means, Belanovsky continues, is that “censorship has returned in the form of farce.”

            Obviously, he says, such actions require a structure and that could hardly be created in a day or limited to the question of bare breasts in a film. “Now probably the practice of removing ideologically harmful things will return.” Of course, leaders in other countries are now doing the same, something anyone with any judgment should resist.