Russian Revolution
Censorship
Prior to the October Revolution, censorship was in Lenin's control. Lenin in his own way became the primary voice of the public and in the April following the February Revolution in 1917, insisted in his April Theses that the Bolsheviks should not give support to the swaying provisional governments and support the socialist revolution instead. he influence the Bolsheviks had supported the efforts of the Petrograd Soviets to successfully (arguably) topple the provisional governments in the October Revolution. This included take over the Winter Palace, the ministries, the post and telegraph buildings, and the printing presses of Russkaia voila. A resolution the day after October 25 temporarily forbade the publication of bourgeois papers and counterrevolutionary publications. The Council of Commissars published its Decree on the Press to give the council the right to close down newspapers which advocated resistance to the new authorities.
The October Revolution
Lenin's Theory of the Press
Prior to the October Revolution, censorship was in Lenin's control. Lenin in his own way became the primary voice of the public and in the April following the February Revolution in 1917, insisted in his April Theses that the Bolsheviks should not give support to the swaying provisional governments and support the socialist revolution instead. he influence the Bolsheviks had supported the efforts of the Petrograd Soviets to successfully (arguably) topple the provisional governments in the October Revolution. This included take over the Winter Palace, the ministries, the post and telegraph buildings, and the printing presses of Russkaia voila. A resolution the day after October 25 temporarily forbade the publication of bourgeois papers and counterrevolutionary publications. The Council of Commissars published its Decree on the Press to give the council the right to close down newspapers which advocated resistance to the new authorities.
The October Revolution
- In early 1880s, of Russia’s most influential mass-circulation dailies began to make their mark:The Moscow Sheet and The Stock Market Gazette. During the 1880s, censorship became more rigorous, and the most influential daily, the liberal, nationally circulated The Voice died in censor’s hands.
- From 1882 onwards, the newspapers which had been “warned” three times by the censor were thenceforth obliged to submit their texts to the censor one day before publication. This regulation was relaxed in 1901, when it was decreed that the duration on one “warning” could not exceed one year.
- In 1882 a Special Conference was created, with the power to suspend or suppress any periodical considered “especially harmful”, and to forbid an editor or publisher from carrying on his profession. In 1884 and 1888 special regulations were issued on public libraries and reading-rooms, particularly on those used by the poorer classes. In 1890, the opening of libraries or reading-rooms was made dependent on permission. Despite the harsher censorship, the number of newspapers in Russia rose between 1883 and 1913 from 90 to 1.158.
Lenin's Theory of the Press
- The Decree of the Press was promised to be a temporary measure and to be cancelled after normal social conditions are restored. Trying to destroy the private press financially, the Bolsheviks imposed a ban on printing advertising. It became a monopoly of the state. The impact was a considerable economic blow: very soon tens of newspapers ceased to exist in different cities.
- The Leninist theory of the press (as Lenin’s ideas considering the press were called later on) was not a unique theory. Lenin draws strongly on the model of the German Social Democratic Party (Sparks 1998, 46) and undoubtedly on the writings of Karl Kautsky, who, for Lenin, was for the long period of time a true teacher of how to read Marx’s works and how to build a revolutionary party.
- The origins of Lenin’s theory of the press have to be seen as lying in general traditions of the socialist movement (Sparks 1998, 47). Lenin did not study only the works of German Marxists. Lenin’s media strategy was worked out on the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871. In Lenin’s view, the leaders of the Commune did not undertake tough enough measures against the opposition press, and failed entirely at the time with their own counter-propaganda. Therefore, the Commune was defeated.
- Soviet Russia was a large-scale society, public was atomized, and at the same time the media was centralized. Transmission was basically one-way, even though the press recruited workers and peasants into the process of producing the content of newspapers and portrayed as their mouthpiece. People were depended on media for their identity and media was used for manipulation and control, even how well-intentioned the revolutionaries may have been. Even though the early 20th century Russia was in many ways “a backward” society, the mass society theory of media fits well to the Bolshevik example. The mass society theory rests much on the idea that the media offer a view of the world, a “pseudo-environment”, which is a potent means of manipulation of people, but also an aid to their psychic survival under difficult conditions. And during the first years of the Bolshevik revolution, the conditions really were difficult.R
- Revolutionaries were also journalists: they were experienced in writing articles, and editing and distribution small newspapers (Kenez 1985, 132). The Bolsheviks had fought against the tsarist censorship and did not advocate the institution of censorship after the revolution. According to Kenez (1985, 134–135), they assumed that the revolution would be carried out by the great majority of the people. Hence, the question of repression would not even arise.