Examination of private correspondence in the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries: the legal framework and the role in the fight against terror

This article examines the implementation of postal censorship in the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. The scope of the study is due to the insufficient attention to the study of postal censorship procedures on the part of legal scholars. The Russian autocratic government used postal censorship as a method of investigative activities in different volumes for quite long: documents testify to the facts of opening private correspondence back in the middle of the 18th century. In the second half of the 19th century the development of the revolutionary movement, the emergence and the subsequent strengthening of terrorist ideology in the Russian Empire contributed to the systematization of this activity and the transition of postal censorship work to a qualitatively new level. In the article, an attempt was made to search for the legal framework of postal censorship: the issues of identifying normative legal acts that regulated postal censorship in the Russian Empire are considered. Actually, in the Russian Empire, the Ministry of Internal Affairs used postal censorship (under great secrecy) without any departmental regulation: no instructions, circulars, rulings or orders governing the procedure for conducting this type of search activities were issued. The Postal Department, which, along with the Telegraph Office, was controlled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, censored correspondence. As of 1882, the Russian Empire had eight postal censorship units. The author investigated the mechanism for the institutionalization of a postal censorship case. He paid special attention to the role of postal censorship in the prevention of terrorist attacks and in the disclosure of crimes in the Russian Empire. In the late 19th - early 20th centuries, materials obtained during the examination of private correspondence were presented in overviews and reports of the Police Department in a mediated form as information received via agents. Such materials were used exclusively for investigation purposes, and were not used in the proceedings on a particular case. Bodies of investigation checked even seemingly irrelevant information, found during the examination of correspondence, that arouse the suspicion of the preparation of a terrorist attack. It should be noted that postal censorship was highly efficient in the fight against terror in this period, the data obtained allowed to prevent many terrorist attacks and contributed to the disclosure of crimes.

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