Bad Censor, Good Censor: The Specificity of Censoring of the First Private Newspaper in Tomsk (Sibirskaya Gazeta, 1881-1888)

The article is devoted to identifying features of censoring the Tomsk Sibirskaya Gazeta (1881-1888) on the basis of the study of archival files of the Russian State Historical Archive. The memoirs of contemporaries and the correspondence of the staff of Sibirskaya Gazeta, reflecting the journalists' opinions about the severity of censorship in relation to the periodical, are also used. Particular attention is focused on the history of the establishing of the newspaper and on the first episode of its collision with censorship in 1881. In order to show that personal relationships played an important role in the birth of the local press, the author refers to the censorship background of the establishment of Sibirskaya Gazeta. Its publisher, a famous Tomsk entrepreneur and philanthropist P.I. Makushin, could not immediately establish his own newspaper in Tomsk. The first attempt to publish a newspaper called Tomskiy Listok failed because of the lack of a person in Tomsk who could fulfill the duties of a censor, the second due to the extreme limitations of the allowed program. Only the third attempt was crowned with success, because Makushin was helped by the new Tomsk governor V.I. Mertsalov. He agreed to become the censor of the newspaper; with him, the editorial board felt quite free in terms of censorship. The conflict between the editorial staff and the censor considered in the article occurred in 1881, at the time when Mertsalov was not in Tomsk, and his duties were performed by an official M.A. Gilyarov. The study of archival documents convincingly demonstrates that this censor was biased against the local press, which affected his actions: after reading Issue 11 of Sibirskaya Gazeta, he struck out almost half of the articles, while accompanying them with critical comments on the margins of the censor sheets. The editorial office, protesting against such censorship arbitrariness, tried to issue a number with gaps in the field of crossed out articles and sentences, but Gilyarov forbade it. After that, the conflict moved to a different level: the editorial office appealed to the Minister of the Interior and the General Directorate of the Press, to the metropolitan newspapers with a request to resolve the contradictions. Having examined in detail the documents of the Russian State Historical Archive reflecting this conflict, the author comes to the conclusion that the subjective factor also played a great role in it. In this case, a good relationship with the governor allowed the newspaper to be established in Tomsk. And, on the contrary, the hostile attitude of the deputy governor to the local press led to a conflict with the editorial office, which gained all-Russian fame (thanks to its coverage in the capital's newspapers). The archive case of the publication of Sibirskaya Gazeta allows disclosing a few more censorship plots associated with this periodical, which indicates the need to continue the study of archival files of the Russian State Historical Archive.

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