On Some Unknown Materials of 1870s and Early 1880s of Caucasian Censorship Committee

Abstract

The article studies the materials that are included at the National Archive of Georgia in the collection of Caucasian Censorship Committee.

The Committee’s archive included the plays, unknown for wide society, of Georgian writers: Alexander Kazbegi, David Dadiani, Kote Kipiani, Aghalo Tutaev (Tutashvili) and others; some of plays were banned by the Committee, as they found in them the contents unacceptable for the empire.

There is in the Committee’s archive the manuscript written by famous Georgian poet – Akaki Tsereteli. This is his lecture, discussing Rustaveli’s “Knight in the Panther’s Skin”. We compared the manuscript with the published text and found that there are significant differences between them...

Archive materials have revealed the fact unknown to the wide society: in 1878 famous Georgian public figure Niko Nikoladze has challenged to a duel Dimitri Purtseladze, the chairman of the Censorship Committee; the latter has refused.

In the article, we publish the photos of several Georgian manuscripts.

In the archive there were also found the paintings unknown to the society by Mikhail Chemodanov, the illustrator, widely known in 19^th century in the Europe and later, unfortunately, forgotten; we publish few of his paintings and intend to publish whole set of the discovered illustrations.

We intend to discuss the work of Caucasian Censorship Committee of the later period in the further articles.