О ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ ВОЕННОЙ ЦЕНЗУРЫ РОССИЙСКОЙ ИМПЕРИИ В СФЕРЕ ПЕРЛЮСТРАЦИИ ПИСЕМ ВО ВРЕМЯ ПЕРВОЙ МИРОВОЙ ВОЙНЫ

Abstract

The article, based on military censorship reports, analyzes the categories of confiscated letters grouped by topics of criticism or by the moods of the authors. It reveals significant changes in the perception of the events of the First World War in Russia and Belarus. It also studies specific projects of scientific developments in the field of intensification of weapons, the need to establish the production of machine guns, shells, self-propelled mines, “Greek fire”, explosives, the production of submarines, armored field vehicles. There is an analysis of proposals for teaching courses in combating poisonous gases, revision of training of recruits in order to improve the quality of training, reforming the relationship between the rears and the front.. The article describes such functions of military censorship as protective, which consisted in deleting military secret information, the function of informing the authorities about the mood in the army and assessing the events on the front line, punitive, which manifested itself in notifying the military unit about the sender and providing the police with the information about the recipient of the confiscated letter. The following topics, most persecuted by military censorship, are highlighted: an issue of the Great Retreat of Russian troops in the summer of 1915 and the loss of Galicia and Warsaw; the comments on activities of military censorship; lack of information about the real state of affairs and the circulation of rumors; soldiers’ distrust of officers and Command; letters of a humanistic nature; criticism of failed military decisions taken under the fear of disobedience; the issue of incompetence of fire spotters, sappers and trench builders; comparative characteristics of the quantity and quality of machine guns in the Russian and German armies. It is concluded that, due to censorship prohibitions on discussing any information of a military nature, the military authorities and local administration of front-line territories, in our view, often lagged behind in making urgent and timely decisions on the ground. It resulted in accumulating discontent in the army and among civilian population