Authors

Sophia Polek¹;  ¹ University of Basel, Switzerland

Discussion

Freedom of the press is not usually associated with the Russian Empire during the Tsarist regime, where the production of periodicals and books was monitored by central and local censorship committees. It was only in the 1905 revolution that the press was liberated and a system of judicial control was introduced, according to the common narrative. In my presentation, I will offer a more nuanced interpretation of the situation of press production in the decade before the 1905 revolution, during the revolution and up to 1912. My case study focuses on the largest daily newspaper in the Russian Empire, the Moscow "Russkoe Slovo" ("The Russian Word"), and its star journalist Vlas Mikhailovich Doroshevich (1864-1921), probably best known for his coverage of the penal island of Sakhalin in the late 19th century. I analyse the journalistic role concepts of both the "Russkoe Slovo" and its most popular reporter Doroshevich. Their role conceptions included the demand for "glasnost" in order to be able to inform readers about the most important things in "social life". Through a close reading of numerous articles in "Russkoe Slovo", I show that while censorship remained a constant concern for the newspaper press before 1905, the spectrum of criticism of the tsarist administration was much wider than commonly assumed. Moreover, the analysis of the censorship documents on "Russkoe Slovo" reveals a "newspaper fear": the authorities were concerned about the loss of prestige through the reporting of Doroshevich and others and a "demoralisation" of the lower classes, but could do little about it. I will further show that during the revolutionary events of 1905 it was the newspaper press that freed itself step by step from censorship regulations, and not the authorities who freed the press. In addition, the often forgotten contribution of interest group of organised newspaper printers in the struggle for press freedom will be discussed. Finally, I will present the journalistic role conceptions in "Russkoe Slovo" and the official press control practice towards this newspaper for the years after the revolution until 1912 and show that the situation for press production did not improve significantly as the judicial control system brought new challenges to the newspaper press in the Russian Empire. My analysis is based on journalistic texts, business correspondence between editors and journalists, essays by contemporary press observers, auobiographical texts and official censorship documents from the "Main Office for Press Affairs". This analysis is part of my dissertation project on a cultural history of journalistic reporting in the Imperial Russian mass press. My project contributes to the study of the mass press and its functioning in the consumer society of the late Tsarist Empire, the notions of press freedom that were not held by intellectuals but by ordinary journalists and commercial newspapers that became the most widely read periodicals from the 1890s onwar