Relations of Moskovskie Vedomosti, Grazhdanin and Novoe Vremya with the Main Directorate for Press Affairs in the late 1890s: formal and informal practices

The article reconstructs the strategies of the interaction between the editorial offices of the newspapers “Moskovskie Vedomosti”, “Grazhdanin”, and “Novoe Vremya” with the Main Directorate for Press Affairs (GUDP) from 1894 to 1899. It examines the unsuccessful attempt to appoint V.A. Gringmut to the post of head of the GUDP while simultaneously granting him control of “Moskovskie Vedomosti” in 1896. The study's materials demonstrate that in response to appeals to the GUDP from the editor of “Moskovskie Vedomosti”, V.A. Gringmut, and the publisher of "Grazhdanin", Prince V.P. Meshchersky, concerning the removal of imposed restrictions, the Minister of Internal Affairs, I.L. Goremykin (often with the sanction of Nicholas II), made decisions favorable to these conservative publications. Particular attention is paid to the informal practices of interaction between editors and censors, as well as to the relationships between the publisher of "Novoye Vremya", A.S. Suvorin, and the heads of the GUDP, E.M. Feoktistov and M.P. Solovyov. The article touches upon the issue of the “Novoe Vremya” editorial office disclosing sources of information published in the newspaper concerning sensitive aspects of policy in the Far East. The claims of various government departments regarding the content of articles in "Grazhdanin" and "Novoye Vremya" and the GUDP's reactions to them are separately analyzed.The methodological foundation of the study is a systems approach, which includes comparative analysis and the use of internal documentation and official correspondence of the GUDP, periodical materials, published and unpublished personal documents of leading political figures, publishers, and editors of newspapers and magazines as sources. The scientific novelty of the work is determined by the need for a comprehensive study of the mutual influence of domestic policy and journalistic activity covering it, within the context of an underdeveloped legal system and growing crisis phenomena in public administration at the turn of the 20th century. The outcome of the work is an attempt to reconstruct and conduct a comparative analysis of the mechanisms of informal communication between publishers and editors of periodicals with the GUDP, and to determine the degree of state involvement in journalistic activity. The conclusions drawn from the research indicate the prevalence of informal practices in the relationship between the conservative press and the MDPA in the second half of the 1890s, and also emphasize that the formally existing legal norms were applied selectively to conservative publications during this period.