The study “Censored: Examining the Standards, Personnel, and Censorship Technology in the Soviet Military Press, 1944–1945” by Alemzhan Arimov and Bereket Karibaev examined the system of military censorship in Soviet military press in 1944 and 1945 – the end stage of the Second World War.
Although the Soviet military censorship system was significantly improved in controlling the military periodicals from 1944 to 1945, the roots of many of these practices, according to Matthew Lenoe, were in the past decades in mass worker newspapers, workplace wall newspapers, and the worker-peasant correspondents during the 1920s New Economic Policy, which laid the groundworks for mass journalism and the Stalinist discourse.
The censorship in the Soviet press was entirely under the communist party-state, and nothing was published without their permission. The civilian press was subject to Glavlit, while the military newspapers passed a two-stage verification in precirculation and postcirculation. The censors themselves were acting staff officers who combined duties.
In 1944, the censors were regulated by ‘Rules for the Preservation of Military Secrets in the Red Army’s Press’ put into rule in February 11 1944 by the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, General A. I. Antonov. The rules were 140 paragraphs long and covered many aspects of defense. In March 3 1945, additional consolidated guidelines for example prohibited information about foreign prisoners released by Soviet troops, for reasons unknown. However, the authors speculate that they may have to do with the status of Soviet prisoners of war suspected of treason.
All in all, the authors conclude that censorship practices arose from practices in the 1920s and 1930s but were tightened during the war, and especially from March 1944 to May 1945. Ideological censorship was to prevent political mistakes and to limit undesirable information for publication, but despite the Rules, the criteria remained vague.
Further, even censored materials might indirectly disclose undesirable information, as evidenced by “preventive articles” warning Soviet soldiers not to commit military crimes, which we from history do know were committed. In total, the authors state that “the Soviet military censorship worked quite effectively without undergoing significant alterations during the period under review.”
The article “Censored: Examining the Standards, Personnel, and Censorship Technology in the Soviet Military Press, 1944–1945” by Alemzhan Arimov and Bereket Karibaev is in Media History. (free abstract).
Picture: Untitled by Anton Maksimov.
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