Military censorship in Russia in 1914‒1918: structure, features of work, documentary legacy

Abstract

The relevance of the research topic is related to the continuing problems of control and access to information in the modern information society.

The purpose of the study is to provide a systematic understanding of military censorship in Russia in 1914-1918 in the context of the development of the late Imperial state mechanism.

 Objectives analysis of the structure, activities, and personnel of military censorship in Russia during the First World War; concentration of currently available information on documents of military censorship stored in various Russian and foreign archives.

Methodology. The historical and typological method was used to analyze the structure and functions of military censorship, and the historical and genetic method was used to study its development during the First World War. The study of the personnel, the peculiarities of the work of different areas of censorship was carried out using the historical and comparative method.

Results. The paper analyzes the legislative framework, structure and directions of military censorship in Russia during the First World War. It is shown that military censorship was a complex, multi-level structure that had no unity of command and included representatives of different, sometimes conflicting departments. These features led to the «scattering» of the documentary heritage of the military censorship authorities in numerous collections of Russian and foreign archives.

Conclusions. The complexity of the structure of military censorship created numerous difficulties in the practice of censorship control. The chronic disadvantages of Russian censorship during the First world war years were contradictory decisions, inconsistency and insufficient elaboration of the regulatory framework, which often led to the use of military censorship for purely political purposes (for example, to censor speeches by opposition Duma deputies). The problems of military censorship were aggravated by a chronic shortage of funding, shortage and high turn-over of personnel. As a result, instead of becoming an effective tool in the hands of the government, military censor-ship became one of the factors of the political crisis in Russia on the eve of the Russian revolution.