§6
About the same time the same Minister excogitated the Provincial Gazettes. Our Government, while utterly contemptuous of education, makes pretensions to be literary; and whereas, in England, for example, there are no Government newspapers at all, every public department in Russia publishes its own organ, and so does the Academy, and so do the Universities. We have papers to represent the mining interest and the pickled-herring interest, the interests of Frenchmen and Germans, the marine interest and the land-carriage interest, all published at the expense of Government. The different departments contract for articles, just as they contract for fire-wood and candles, the only difference being that in the former case there is no competition; there is no lack of general surveys, invented statistics, and fanciful conclusions based on the statistics. Together with a monopoly in everything else, the Government has assumed a monopoly of nonsense; ordering everyone to be silent, it chatters itself without ceasing. In continuation of this system, Bludov ordered that each provincial Government should publish its own Gazette, and that each Gazette should include, as well as the official news, a department for history, literature and the like.
No sooner said than done. In fifty provincial Governments they were soon tearing their hair over this unofficial part. Priests from the theological seminaries, doctors of medicine, schoolmasters, anyone who was suspected of being able to spell correctly—all these were pressed into the service. These recruits reflected, read up the leading newspapers and magazines, felt nervous, took the plunge, and finally produced their little articles.
To see oneself in print is one of the strongest artificial passions of an age corrupted by books. But it requires courage, nevertheless, except in special circumstances, to venture on a public exhibition of one’s productions. People who would not have dreamed of publishing their articles in the Moscow Gazette or the Petersburg newspapers, now began to print their writings in the privacy of their own houses. Thus the dangerous habit of possessing an organ of one’s own took root, and men became accustomed to publicity. And indeed it is not a bad thing to have a weapon which is always ready for use. A printing press, like the human tongue, has no bones.