“Two Rubles More”: A Censorship Story About an Increase in the Subscription Fee for the Newspaper Sibirskiy Vestnik (Tomsk, 1887-1889)

This article presents the results of a study of a conflict that arose in 1887 between the Tomsk newspaper Sibirskiy Vestnik, the local provincial government, and the main Russian censorship agency, the Main Directorate for Press Affairs, over an increase in the price of the newspaper subscription. The article aims to identify the specifics of the relationship between the provincial press and censorship. The author reveals the essence and causes of the conflict, reconstructs its main stages, clarifies the positions of the parties to the conflict: the publishers of the Sibirskiy Vestnik newspaper, representatives of the provincial government, and officials of the Main Directorate for Press Affairs. The main research methods are the method of historical reconstruction and a conceptual analysis of archival files (based on the materials of the Russian State Historical Archive, Fund 776. List 12. 1885. File 19. Part I). Sibirskiy Vestnik was founded in Tomsk in 1885 by the lawyer Vasily Kartamyshev with the direct support of the Tomsk governor Krasovsky. However, after Krasovsky’s death, other Tomsk governors stopped supporting the newspaper and its publisher. One of the stages of Kartamyshev’s “struggle” with the governors was his attempt to raise the price for the newspaper issue from 7 to 8, and then to 9 rubles a year. It took Kartamyshev three stages to achieve a positive result. At the first stage, the Main Directorate for Press Affairs refused the publisher’s proposal on the basis of a negative response from the Tomsk governor Laks (1887). At the second stage, both the Tomsk governor Bulyubash and the Main Directorate for Press Affairs agreed to satisfy Kartamyshev’s request, but the refusal came from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (1888-1889). And only at the third stage, when the leaders of Sibirskiy Vestnik turned to a high-ranking official who knew them personally, the consent of the Main Directorate for the Press Affairs was obtained (1889). This episode from the life of Sibirskiy Vestnik showed the positions of the conflicting parties. The publishers believed that the price increase was a “purely economic issue,” the solution of which would improve the newspaper’s management (increase employees’ salaries, etc.). However, for the local provincial authorities, the question of raising the price was of a completely different nature: they tried to make it one of the levers of influence on the scandalous editor. The Supreme Censorship Department, on which the decision to raise the price of the Sibirskiy Vestnik subscription depended to a greater extent, first of all, supported the position of the governors. A further study of the archives of Sibirskiy Vestnik will help to restore the full history of this newspaper, reflected in the little-studied documents of the Russian State Historical Archive.

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