Different "voices", part 5

Continuation of the series, start read here .

Since 1903, the RSDLP program included "unlimited freedom of conscience, words, printing, meetings, strikes and unions." However, the next day after coming to power, the Bolsheviks closed the ten largest Russian newspapers, and a day later, on October 27, the Lenin’s signature of the press, announcing the “temporary” restrictions on the freedom of the press.

It is interesting that in the text of the decree, what later began to be solemnly called the Great October Socialist Revolution, is openly called a coup:

In the heavy decisive hour of the coup and days, directly behind it, the Provisional Revolutionary Committee was forced to take a number of measures against the counter -revolutionary press of various shades. Immediately from all sides, screams rose that the new socialist power violated, thus, the basic principle of its program, encroaching on the freedom of print.

The working and peasant government draws attention to the fact that in our society behind this liberal screens, freedom is actually hidden for the property classes, taking into its own hands the lion's share of the entire press, unconsciously poison the minds and bring turmoil into the consciousness of the masses. Everyone knows that the bourgeois press is one of the powerful weapons of the bourgeoisie. Especially in critical moments, when the new government, the power of workers and peasants, only strongly, it was impossible to completely leave this weapon in the hands of the enemy while it is no less dangerous in such minutes than bombs and machine guns. That is why temporary and emergency measures were taken to suppress the flow of dirt and slander, in which the yellow and green press would willingly sneak out the young victory of the people.

By the end of the year, complete cleansing of the press ended, and censorship was introduced to control the remaining. For the particularly malicious freethinkers, the revolutionary tribunal of the press was established, the chairman of which was the commissioner of the press, propaganda and agitation in the Union of Communities of the Northern Region V. Volodarsky.

In this post, he closed more than 150 newspapers, famous for the remarkable in absurdity with the phrase:

The people who dug up in this newspaper, under the guise of typos, spread false, provocative rumors, prepared a blow to the back of the October Revolution.

The new government, however, was worried not only that the newspapers within the country write, but also that the Western press reports about what was happening in Russia. Information materials intended for foreign countries were subjected to special censorship, as well as messages from abroad designed for publication in the Soviet press. The control of them was entrusted to the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.

On April 26, 1919, the drug-deck Georgy Chicherin reported to the Central Committee on the distribution of duties between the People’s Commissar and his deputies: Maxim Litvinov "will follow the radio received from abroad, transferring to the foreigner (the foreign department of the Russian Telegraph Agency.- V.A. ) intended for publication. T. Litvinov will also monitor the bullying of the inorost."

On December 16, 1919, Chicherin complained to Lenin about the invasion of the task: "To me and comrade Karakhan (another deputy commissar. - V.A. ), we have no physical opportunity, and we do not have competent censors. We themselves are undoubtedly competent than those who could be found as censors."

So they did. On December 31, 1919, a draft resolution was drawn up in the Central Committee, which was responsible for the chief editors to censored all foreign policy texts, and materials from the inhoost and radio investigator of growth (it was a digested radio designed for reading on the radio), NKIDA.

The Soviet press scolded the Western governments so fiercely that the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars had to intervene in this issue. On this topic there is a Lenin's own instructions, compiled in early December of the same year:

"About the Entente powers to describe from our worldview, but to avoid superficial vulgar swear words. To refrain from simple insults of their ministers."

The entry of foreign journalists to Soviet Russia was prohibited. Correspondents of the "bourgeois" media were allowed to the country only by special permits. So, for example, in February 1920, Lenin accepted the American journalist Lincoln Air and film operator Viktor Kyubs in the Kremlin , spoke to them in his office and in his apartment. The leader was very worried about the issue of trade blockade:

I see no reason why such a socialist state as ours cannot have unlimited business relations with capitalist countries. We are not against using capitalist locomotives and agricultural machines, so why should they object to use our socialist wheat, flax and platinum? After all, socialist grain has the same taste as any other grain, isn't it?

The head of the Soviet government, just as the current leader of Russia, convinced the interlocutor that neither Europe nor America could do without Russia:

Without Russia, Europe will not be able to get to his feet. And when Europe is exhausted, America's position becomes critical. What is the benefits of America from its wealth if she cannot acquire what she needs for him?

The personnel shot by Victor Kyubs during the interview. A fragment from the film by M. Romm and M. Slavinskaya "Living Lenin" (1969, TsSDF)

The interview of Lenin was reprinted by many newspapers in Europe and America. And in the USSR it was first published in 1957.

By the way, Ilyich was vividly interested in fees for his publications in the West. In October 1922, the American publishing house Harper & Brothers (now Harpercollins) appealed to him to publish an autobiographical book. Lenin instructed his personal secretary Lydia Fotieva to find out the financial conditions. The publishing house replied that it was ready to pay from 10 to 20 thousand dollars (from about 140 to 280 thousand at the current rate).

In July 1920, the French journalist Marsillac wrote a “wrong” report about his trip to Russia, and the People's Commissariat of Chicher Chicherin was forced to make excuses to the Bolshevik Areopagus:

Marsillac was missed on the basis of the issued comrade. Litvinov’s pass at the time when the speech of Bart (former Prime Minister of France, at that time was a deputy of the parliament.- V.A. ) for reconciliation with Soviet Russia and the French press, according to Comrade, was uttered in the French parliament. Litvinova, looking for reasons for a new orientation in the Russian question ... After that, however, there was a new change as a result of the Polish offensive on which France began to lay the greatest hopes. This change of mood in France explains the change in the method of scripture by Martians.

Chicherin sets out the conditions of the Frenchman’s trip in detail:

He was admitted for the shortest time and rode after a two -week stay in Moscow. Special agents were assigned to him from the special department of the Cheka, which did not depart from him for any minute. He was shown only that he allowed to show a special department through his agents, so there were undoubtedly sufficient grounds for familiarizing him with the factory where he was led ...

Finally, the People's Commissar reports the complete closure of the entry of "bourgeois journalists" to Russia:

The period of invitation of numerous journalists ended along with the change of international situation. It was decided to terminate access for bourgeois journalists to us, and somewhat later the People's Commissariat and the Special Department of the Cheka made a decision on the complete termination of permissions to foreigners to enter Russia with the exception of special cases to be strictly analyzed, with the exception of party comrades coming here.

The expulsion of foreign correspondents convicted of disloyalty was also practiced. In May 1922, a member of the collegium of the NKKISR USSR Lev Karakhan reported to the Politburo:

For some time, especially for the period of the Genoese conference, the representative of the American Telegraph Agency United Press in Moscow, Gr. Gullinger, began to send telegrams abroad, depicting events in Russia. This was especially affected by his telegrams about the seizure of church property and in telegrams that anticipated the "United Front" of Germany and Russia at the Genoese conference. We have repeatedly paid his attention to the perversion of the facts that he allowed in his telegrams, some of his telegrams did not miss, and in others, we deleted especially the tendentious places that could serve as the basis for the spread of false rumors about Russia abroad. In response to this, Gr. Gullinger began to interspers the phrases on strengthening censorship in Moscow in his telegrams. On April 26, he brought to send a telegram attached to this in a copy. This telegram was not missed, nevertheless, Gullinger sent it, apparently, through a mission that we learned from the answer received by him to his proposal.

I believe that letting such crooks live in Moscow and continue to make dirty tricks is unacceptable. I propose to send immediately.

Chullinger Chicherin wrote to Lenin in December 1921: "Gullinger is the most dangerous of the correspondents, he will certainly enjoy and let the sensation. Real nostril." In this case, Gullinger guessed that he sent a recommendation to the London Bureau of United Press at the Genoese conference on the censorship of correspondence of foreign journalists working in the Soviet Union. “I’m sure,” wrote Gullinger, “that the simultaneous pressure here and there can be canceled censorship, which has intensified since mid -March. Emphasize the need for complete freedom for correspondents in the premise of correspondence if world trust in Russia should actually be restored.” From London they replied: "Good offer." According to this answer, in Moscow they realized that a telegram, not missed by censorship, nevertheless reached the addressee.

Naturally, the Soviet government in no case wanted to allow discussing this issue in Genoa. The journalist should be approximately punished. The Politburo unanimously agreed with the proposal of Karakhan.

According to Lenin’s personal order, the strict surveillance of the employees of the American administration of assistance to the starving (ARA), headed by future US President Herbert Hoover, was established. In August 1921, Lenin wrote a note to Molotov on this occasion:

In view of the agreement with the Ammer [Ikantz] Hoover, the arrival of the mass of the Americans will come. We must take care of supervision and awareness.

I propose to the [olit] bureau to decorate:

Create this with the task of preparing, develop, develop and conduct through the Cheka, etc. Bodies strengthening supervision and awareness of foreigners ...

The main thing: to take into account and mobilize the maximum of those who know the English [Iski] language of the Communists for the introduction to [Omis] of this Hoover and for other types of supervision and awareness.

Speech, as we see, was not just about external observation, but also about the introduction of agents. The Soviet press wrote about the activities of ARA with undisguised anger: "They again arrange the nets with the devilish cunning, trying to take the worst enemy in them - the Republic of Soviets." ("Village Pravda", August 3, 1921).

In 1920, the film company British Pathé sent to Soviet Russia the film operator George Ekol and journalist Arthur Ransom. In this passage from their film "Outside the Gates of Soviet Russia", the life of Samara under the Bolsheviks is shown. At the end of the fragment, the railway composition with food and the inscription "Ara" is visible.

Mandatory perelustration was also subject to private postal items abroad and from abroad. The letters were opened ineptly. On this occasion, the acting People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs of the RSFSR Artemy Lyubovich wrote in September 1922 to the secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP Stalin:

Recently, the issue with our censorship is acute. We run into international scandals; The internal censorship is so inept, it works so rudely that all kinds of dealers and counter-revolutionaries know it well and use it widely begin to develop by private illegal mail (railway conductors and so on). Killing mail, censorship kills ineptness and itself, not wanting to learn and conduct those technical techniques that would make censorship more real, and the development of mail would not affect as adversely as it is now.

The question was so important that it was put in the Politburo. Lyubov sent the Memorandum "about the refusal of some foreign states to accept and send the correspondence sent from the USSR." Despite the fact that the RSFSR entered into the World Postal Union, established in Madrid in November 1920, reported Lyubov, "the conspiratorial nature of our military-political censorship does not allow our postal institutions to make the mark on the percentage of international correspondence that this was subjected to censorship and that this is precisely the fact of the traces of it are explained by the traces of it. autopsy ". Lyubov asked either to legalize perlustration, or to produce it more carefully.

The commission appointed to the Politburo studied the problem and reported the results. The Politburo ruled: “legalization ... to recognize the undesirable”, “improving the quality of work”, for which “attract old specialists” (that is, officials of the tsarist censorship department who engaged in opening and reading private correspondence), as well as “recognize the personnel of the unusable and little corresponding to their political level”.

Continuation of the series read here .