From the very beginning of the Bolshevik rule in 1917, words were nationalized and guarded by the party. Nothing could be printed without its permission. The first “black” lists of banned books were compiled by Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, and included the Bible as well as many children’s books. In the 1930s a librarian was tried and exiled for issuing philosophical works that were not even banned but that simply did not fit into the Marxist view of the world. Libraries had “closed” sections and special permission was required for reading books there.
