Spirit and details: Practices of censorial reading and the social status of the censor during the pre-reform era (the case of I.A. Gončarov)

The article deals with the problem of the relationship between various reading strategies by the censor and ideas about his social role during the pre-reform era of the late 1850s. The authors explore on the one hand the curious history of the journal publication of essays by P.M. Kovalevskij, a nephew of the minister of public education, in 1858 which is reconstructed on the basis of censorship documents, and on the other hand the colourful review by P.A. Efremov. Thus they demonstrate the difficulties I.A. Gončarov as a censor was faced with, who, being forced to remain in the confines of the persistent censorship practices of “petty”, “hypercritical” reading, tried to reform them in accordance with the new circumstances and his literary persuasions.

The article is written in Russian.