In the Russian Empire, censorship was a means of forming public opinion, promoting a unified ideology and defending imperial interests. Given the different socio-political and socio-cultural features of the Ukrainian lands within the empire, the censorship policy and activities of the respective institutions had their own specific features, special functional tasks. Among them, the central was to influence the development of national culture, to slow down the deployment of the Ukrainian national liberation movement, to control the labor movement, to protect public morals. The first Russian Revolution of 1905-1907 led to significant changes in the legal framework and mechanisms of censorship, somewhat transformed the political order in the country, eased anti-Ukrainian repressive pressure. The study of the work of tsarist censorship in Ukrainian provinces during 1905–1917 conducted in the proposed dissertation made it possible to find out the essence of the information policy of the imperial government during the difficult and turning periods in the history of the Russian Empire (in the conditions of the First Russian Revolution, the post-revolutionary reaction ), significantly expand the scientific knowledge of the activities of police-security institutions of the autocracy in Ukrainian provinces, to supplement the overall picture of the development of the national movement, th publishing efforts to clarify the impact of the special restrictive measures in the information area on the socio-political situation in the regions of the Russian Ukraine.
The first chapter of the paper explains the state of the scientific study of the selected subject, describes the source base and methodology of the study. In the relevant chapter, three groups of works were identified and characterized: methodological, contextual and special historical works. Analysis of the works devoted to the problem of censorship, information policy in the Russian Empire, showed that in the pre-Soviet and Soviet periods of the development of historical science, due to various circumstances, there was no comprehensive coverage of the work of censorship bodies in the Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire. Ukrainian historians of the pre-Soviet period (B. Grinchenko, M. Hrushevskyi, S. Efremov, S. Petliura) focused on the coverage of manifestations of anti-Ukrainian censorship policy, Russian historians (K. Arsenyev, M. Lemke, V. Deriuzhynskyi, M. Olmynskyi, E. Valle-de-Barr), although covering the general aspects of the functioning of censorship, analyzing changes in the relevant legislation, did not take into account the practice of its implementation on the ground and, in particular, in the territory of modern Ukraine. Despite the fact that no generalized study on the history of censorship was created during the Soviet period, but itself studied as part of the history of literature and journalism with relevant ideological judgments, we have nevertheless identified a number of important scientific advances made in the general scientific discourse by Soviet historians: bureaucratic apparatus, determining the general features of the censorship regime after 1905, revealing the interdependence of printing activity and easing the censorship pressure.
According to the purpose and the subject of modern studies on the history of censorship, we have identified seven groups of works, which study: 1) the general history of the activities of censorship institutions and the censorship policy of imperial power; 2) the activity of censorship institutions in certain regions of the Russian Empire, including in the national outskirts; 3) formation and development of censorship legislation; 4) source-related aspects of the activities of censorship bodies; 5) daily censorship activities, relations of censorship bodies with individual writers and publicists; 6) the person of the censor, his social and legal status; 7) history of journalism and publishing. An analysis of the works of foreign and national historians has led to the claim that there is no comprehensive research on the activities of censorship bodies in Ukrainian provinces during the revolutionary transformations (1905–1907) and post-revolutionary reform (1907–1917) of the autocratic model of power in Russia.
In carrying out the research, the following sources were used as sources: 1) legislative and regulatory acts; 2) business documentation of relevant state institutions; 3) materials of periodicals of that time; 4) sources of personal origin (epistolary, memoirs and memoirs); 5) published statistical, reference and biographical information. The main array of unpublished act documents was taken from the funds of the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine (f. 295, 442, 1680), the State Archives of Kyiv (155, 287), and the State Archives of Odesa Region (f. 10-13).
