Authors

Discussion

This paper examines one of the areas of activity for restriction of information – the system of military censorship in the Soviet military press (front, army, divisional newspapers): what remained unchanged and what was transformed in its work on protecting information, which was a military secret between 1944 and 1945. The study focuses on the regulatory framework of military censorship, the objects of the ban, the censor's personnel, technology of censorship control. Until December 1943 in the Red Army, there was a ‘Regulation on the organization of military censorship’ of 1935, which did not meet wartime requirements. The new ‘Regulation’ improved the situation. The change and addition of the composition of the information constituting military secrets were directly affected by the course of combat operations during the Red Army’s campaign in Europe. The subject of censorship prevented the disclosure of military secrets, political errors, and information undesirable to publish in the military press.

This paper argues that significant amounts of printed information were censored, the percent of violations detected was not critical, and the Soviet military censors coped with the tasks set. Everything was decided in favor of denial, and the criteria for prohibition became clearer.

The subject of censorship was to prevent the disclosure of military secrets, political errors and information undesirable for publication. The censors mainly focused on information that constituted a military secret, combined at one hundred and forty paragraphs of the ‘Rules for the Preservation of Military Secrets in the Red Army's Press’ and consolidated guidelines. Interestingly, censors acted instinctively while identifying political errors and undesirable information since the documents regulating the censorship procedure did not clarify the criteria for banning it. In these cases, everything was decided in favor of the ban. However, despite the prescribed objects of the ban, prohibited information was leaking almost until the end of the war.

Moreover, even newspaper materials that were censored could indirectly disclose military secrets. This is evidenced by articles of a preventive nature, which warned Soviet soldiers against committing military crimes, published in the military press during the combat operations in Germany. Nevertheless, this trend was not a large-scale phenomenon. In general, the Soviet military censorship system worked rather effectively.