Russian Federation

Media Origins

The first newspaper in Russia was founded during the early 1700s as a propaganda tool for the Tsar, who was fighting a war with Sweden and needed a propaganda vehicle. More than half a century would pass before the Russian press would begin to expand and that would happen thanks to Catherine the Great's Enlightenment-inspired reforms. In 1796, Catherine approved the first official censorship institution in Russia, whose job was to make sure that the journalistic enthusiasm sparked by the importation of printing technology from the West did not translate into “improper” newspaper content. The next stage in the development of the Russian press took place during the reign of Tsar Alexander II (1855–81), who instituted some of the most wide-ranging institutional reforms to that point, including the emancipation of serfs, abolishment of the death penalty, and creation of a new judicial system. Against the background of these reforms and a rapidly industrializing country, the press acquired, for the first time, a significant societal value, with the Russian intelligentsia increasingly involved in its production and consumption.

In 1865, Russian press laws were revised to reflect the changing sociopolitical and ideological situation: censors now focused less on weeding out [Page 1233]“immoral” content in publications, and more on “inflammatory” (read “antiestablishment”) content. Such judgments, however, were now the province of the legal courts and newspaper publishers, and contributors could defend themselves in front of a judge. Preliminary censorship of newspapers was eliminated for a while, but publications could still be confiscated by the authorities before they were distributed. The last part of the nineteenth century would see many Russian newspapers, especially those in Moscow and St. Petersburg, align themselves with one of the competing ideologies of the day: liberalism, social-democracy, and monarchism.

The last important stage in the development of the Tsarist press occurred in 1905, one result of the attempted revolution that year. Defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and other economic and sociopolitical factors led to a series of worker strikes and demonstrations, which, in turn, attracted violent governmental repression. While government forces eventually managed to contain and control the revolution, the tsar was forced to sign into law the so-called October Manifest in order to appease the protesters. Among other things, the Manifesto legalized political parties, established a Parliament (the Duma), and guaranteed freedom of thought and conscience to citizens. Newspapers flourished as political parties now legally established their own publications. At the turn of the twentieth century, most newspapers were privately owned.

...