Organization of the censored activities to monitor the press in the Russian empire in the second half of the XIX - the beginning of XX centuries (on the materials of the Central Chernozem region)

The article is devoted to the history of the censored activities in the provinces of Central Black Earth region in the second half of the XIX - the beginning of XX centuries. Up to the present time the issues of organization and implementation of the censorship are rather debatable. At the times of the Russian Empire and the new Soviet state the institution of censorship was widely recognizable. Nowadays in the Russian Federation it is prohibited. Various aspects of the censored activities in the Russian Empire were devoted to the historical works of many modern scholars, however, in the framework of the Central-Chernozem region, this question has not been studied enough. There are plenty of recourses on the history of censorship in the regions. The most valuable recourses of them are sure to be the materials of the Central and local archives. The author used the materials of the State archives of Kursk and Voronezh regions, the State archive of the Russian Federation. The article contains the analysis of the development of periodicals in the Russian provinces, as well as the specificities of the work of the provincial authorities for the implementation of the censorship of oversight. It is shown that at the turn of XIX-XX centuries there have been significant changes in the mechanisms of the implementation of the censhorship activities in the Russian Empire, which got its enshrined in law in 1905. They were connected both with the general liberalization of the political situation in the country and with the obvious inefficiency of the previous censorship practices. The regions existed in the framework of the Imperial practices, and especially the censored activities were determined by the local specificities. In the Central provinces there were no special censorship institutions and officials. The local authorities performed all censorship activities. Legislative practices in the field did not exist at all, but there was a specificity of application of the censorship laws in the region, as expressed, in the first place for their violations in connection with the wrong interpretation of laws and circulars of the Main Department of the press.