The February Revolution of 1917 and periodicals of Siberia

Russia became the freest country in the world at war. The Provisional Government also proclaimed press freedom among other freedoms. The rapid growth of the number of Siberian periodicals became one of the consequences of press freedom declaration in Russia. The growth for the March - September period was more than triple. The same process in journal products was not observed in Siberia. Also, the swift class and party differentiation of periodicals began during the February Revolution, as Russia represented the country with an antagonistic class society in 1917. Ideological and political antagonism, ideological and political fight of classes, parties, individuals were inevitable in such a society, as the specific condition of social being in a historical era finds reflection in public consciousness. Public consciousness, as we know, represents a set of ideas, views and representations existing in society. As in those concrete historical conditions there were no such electronic mass media as the Internet, radio, television, the periodicals naturally acted as mass media. Among 72 newspapers which were issued in Siberia in March, 1917, 28 were mixed - SR-Menshevist, 11 were SR and 2 were Menshevist. Thus, in total, in March, 1917 the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks of Transurals controlled 41 newspapers; 31 newspapers, less than 43 % (20 bourgeois and cadet newspapers among them) was the share of all other political parties and movements. It is possible to note the obvious prevalence of the right socialist mass media in Siberia after the February Revolution. These data seem logical, as 8-9 million out of the total of the 10-11 million people of the region at that time were peasants. Therefore, agitation and propaganda efforts of the main moderate socialist parties, the SRs and the Mensheviks, mainly aimed at the peasantry and the middle classes of the city population. As well as the bourgeois and cadet newspapers, newspapers of the SRs and the Mensheviks generally concerned the problems of power, war and peace. Peasant, worker and especially national questions had only begun to develop after February. The same can also be told about the relevant magazines. There were no Bolshevist newspapers and magazines in Siberia in March, 1917. The first Bolshevist newspaper, Sibirskaya pravda (Krasnoyarsk), appeared in the region on 2 April 1917. In the first months of the revolution, representatives of the moderate socialist and bourgeois political parties, who still had prevailing influence on local population, dominated both in new authorities and in the minds and moods of the Siberians.

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