The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

There was one daily newspaper in Russia that had a single subscriber: the Czar. It was published by the Ministry of the Interior, and it consisted exclusively of information about the activities of the secret police and of the penal administration for political prisoners. The sheet probably contained everything of importance known to the Minister of the Interior himself, but like every other newspaper in Czarist Russia it was heavily censored; some of the police news was not considered fit to print, even in a classified publication for the Emperor’s eyes alone. The censoring was done, of course, by the policemen themselves, that is by the officials — not necessarily at the top level — of the Okhrana, the political secret police.