The Struggle Between the Press and the Administration in Primorskaya Oblast on the Eve of World War I (1910-1914)

The article deals with the origin and development of a conflict between the top administration and the periodicals in Primorskaya Oblast from 1910 to 1914 on the basis of a study of archival files of the Russian State Historical Archive and the Russian State Historical Archive of the Far East. Documents from the Office of the Amur Governor-General, the Primorskaya Oblast Administration, the Vladivostok Inspector for the Press, the General Directorate for the Press were used as the sources. The publications reporting fines and arrests imposed on editors of Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and Nikolsk-Ussuriysk local newspapers, which displeased censorship, were also used. Particular attention is focused on the history of the confrontation between the newspapers and the vice-governor in 1913. The number of repressions against the press in increased every year from 1910 to 1913. The article contains 38 examples of administrative penalties of the newspapers. Officials overseeing the press were displeased with publications expressing sympathy for the ideas of the constitution and freedom, or criticizing the Orthodox Church, monarchy and bureaucracy. For their part, regional authorities were often forced to take actions against the press following complaints of the police, low officials and priests. Penalties imposed on the press, usually in the face of newspaper editors, included confiscation of issues of newspapers, administrative fines, arrests of the editors. The most resolute supporter of a widespread use of such measures was Vladimir Lodyzhensky, the vice-governor of Primorskaya Oblast. He was biased against the local press, believing newspapers were anti-government and untrustworthy. There was a huge scandal during his governing. The editors of four newspapers were arrested at the same time. They appealed to the Minister of the Interior, the General Directorate of the Press, sent requests to the State Duma. However, the most effective method of the struggle against the administration turned out to be the defamation of local officials on the pages of the metropolitan newspapers. In the historical situation, during the Duma monarchy, the central authorities in Saint Petersburg no longer supported the unambiguously repressive actions of the local authorities, fearing publicity in the metropolitan press and public reaction undesirable for the government. The author comes to the conclusion that the reasons for the conflict between the local press and the administration in Primorskaya Oblast were the nature of the newspapers, which were in opposition to the authorities; the features of legislation, which left a wide space for arbitrary interpretation; and the subjective factor, personal characteristics of individual government officials. Despite the fact that the authorities had repressive mechanisms, the conflict showed the increased influence of the regional press in Russia on the eve of the revolution.

Keywords

Authors

References