Regulation of censorship in Russia (second half of the XVIII - early XIX century)

Introduction: in 18th century Russia, the separation of secular censorship from church censorship led to its institutionalization at the beginning of the XIX century. A series of acts of the supreme power, opinions of officials and court decisions in matters of the press preceded the publication of the 1804 Censorship Charter. To understand the reasons for the contradictory, but progressively advancing policy of the supreme power from scattered acts to the charter on censorship is to be done in this article. Materials and Methods: the study was carried out on the basis of published imperial decrees, unpublished archival documents of the Moscow Censorship Committee of the second half of the XVIII - early XIX centuries, scientific works of lawyers and historians. The main research methods used in writing the work were: formal legal, historical and legal methods, the method of social anthropology. Results: the publication of acts on censorship during the period under study was not the result of a progressive reactionary-protective policy, but took place in the context of the separation of “secular” (general civil) censorship from religious, a reaction to revolutionary events in Europe, negative censorship practice, which consisted in incompetent censorship discretion. Discussion and Conclusions: by the beginning of the 19th century, the search for effective forms of censorship policy in the second half of the 18th century ended with the publication of the censorship charter of 1804 and the creation of censorship committees at the imperial universities. University professors were entrusted with censorship until the liberal reforms of the mid-nineteenth century.