Blokhin V.F. «Crisis and Control»: the Metropolitan Press of the Russian Empire during World War I through the Prism of Censorship Reports
DOI:10.22394/2225-8272-2025-14-4-1 EDN WQVKJR
Keywords:
World War I, periodicals, reports of the Petrograd and Moscow Committees, newspaper materials, public opinion, newspaper circulationAbstract
The purpose of the study is to analyze the impact of the First World War on the activities of periodicals in the Russian Empire
based on the reports prepared at the request of the Main Directorate for Press Affairs of the Russian Empire. These documents demonstrate that state control extended not only to the content of publications, but also to the financial and economic condition of publications, their organization, readership demand and even appearance.
Methodology. The methodological basis of the work was made up of historical-genetic (retrospective) and problem-chronological methods, which made it possible to trace the evolution of state policy in the field of printing and identify key problems of the metropolitan press during the war period.
Novelty and results. The chronological sources for writing the article were documents of the censorship department stored in the Russian State Historical Archive, as well as materials from the periodical press. The reports of the censorship committees showed that the book market in Petrograd and Moscow was experiencing obvious stagnation, and the price of paper for printing had more than tripled. Despite the increase in production costs, the circulation of most of the daily newspapers has also increased significantly. The censorship department's attention to these issues clearly emphasizes the importance of the press in a difficult period for the Russian government. The outcome of the political confrontation that emerged in Russia in 1916 largely depended on the content of newspaper content. At the same time, it is obvious that the conservative-right press did not justify itself: publications of this type not only lost their subscribers, but also decreased in the amount of information provided, and were printed in order to save money on poor paper
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