“I serve the cause, not the ministers”: the professional and public stance of censor N.F. von Kruse on the eve of the “great reforms”

The article examines the activities of the censor of the Moscow Censorship Committee N.F. von Kruse. For the first time in Russian historiography, the author uses Kruse’s letters stored in the Manuscripts Department of the Russian State Library as a source. These “personal texts” made it possible to clarify Kruse’s contribution to the development of Russian journalism on the eve of the “great reforms”, at the beginning of the “glasnost” during the time of Alexander II. The scientific originality of the article also consists in the author’s approach of studying Kruse’s censorship activities through determining the specific features of his interaction with the authors and publishers. The main attention is paid to the particular censorship regulations of manuscripts introduced during the reign of Emperor Nicholas I as compared to Kruse’s working methods. The author comes to the conclusion that the constructive approach which Censor Kruse practiced in his work led to productive cooperation with authors and publishers, contributed to fruitful results in their activities and the expansion of the boundaries for press freedom in Russia. Although the transitional period of the first years of the reign of Alexander II, on which Kruse’s activities fell, did not yet bring about new, more liberal censorship regulations, a public statement was already made about the necessity of abolishing serfdom from above. This change in the government’s course, as well as Kruse’s personal civic courage, gradually opened the way to Alexander II’s “glasnost”.