Jordan Center for the
Advanced Study of Russia

When Ivan Goncharov was finishing Oblomov in the late 1850s, he was officially employed at the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee. Goncharov’s career as a censor lasted for almost 10 years and earned him high ranks in the bureaucratic system of the Russian Empire and solid wages, but had a negative effect on his literary reputation. Several of Goncharov’s contemporaries considered it immoral or inappropriate for a writer to become a censor. Still, Goncharov accepted his dubious position, and not only…