Let us look at the subject from a slightly different angle: one of the first things they did was to declare the “nationalization” of the printing-establishments of certain newspapers, which they immediately turned over to their own press. In this manner the printing-establishment of the Novoye Vremia was seized and used for the publication of Izvestia and Pravda, the latter being an organ of the party and not of the government. Here was a new form of political nepotism which a Tweed might well envy and only a Nash could portray. We are at the beginning of the nepotism, however. On November 20, 1917, the advertising monopoly was decreed, and on December 10th following it went into effect. This measure forbade the printing of advertisements in any except the official journals, thereby cutting off the revenue from advertising, upon which newspapers depend, from all except official journals. This measure alone had the effect of limiting the possibility of publication practically to the official papers and those which were heavily subsidized. Moreover, the Bolsheviki used the public revenues to subsidize their own newspapers. They raised the postal rates for sending newspapers by mail to a prohibitive height, and then carried the newspapers of their own partizans free of charge at the public expense. They “nationalized” the sale of newspapers, which made it unlawful for unauthorized persons to obtain and offer for sale any save the official Bolshevist newspapers and those newspapers published by its partizans which supported the government. The decree forbade taking subscriptions for the “unauthorized” papers at the post-offices, in accordance with custom, forbade their circulation through the mails, and imposed a special tax upon such as were permitted to appear. Article III of this wonderful decree reads:
Subscriptions to the bourgeois and pseudo-Socialist newspapers are suppressed and will not hereafter be accepted at the post-office. Issues of these journals that may be mailed will not be delivered at their destination.
Newspapers of the bourgeoisie will be subject to a tax which may be as great as three rubles for each number. Pseudo-Socialist journals such as the V period and the Troud Vlast Naroda[63] will be subject to the same tax.
[63] These were organs of the Mensheviki and the Social Revolutionists.
Is it any wonder that by the latter part of May, 1918, the anti-Bolshevist press had been almost entirely exterminated except for the fitful and irregular appearance of papers published surreptitiously, and the few others whose appearance was due to the venality of some Bolshevist officials? Was there ever, in the history of any nation, since Gutenberg’s invention of movable type made newspapers possible, such organized political nepotism? Was there ever, since men organized governments, anything more subversive of freedom and political morality? Yet there is worse to come; as time went on, new devices suggested themselves to these perverters of democracy and corrupters of government. On July 27, 1918, Izvestia published the information that the press department would grant permits for periodical publications, provided they accepted the Soviet platform. In carrying out this arrangement, so essentially despotic, the press department reserved to itself the right to determine whether or not the population was in need of the proposed publication, whether it was advisable to permit the use of any of the available paper-supply for the purpose, and so forth and so on. Under this arrangement permission was given to publish a paper called the Mir. Ostensibly a pacifist paper, the Mir was very cordially welcomed by the Bolshevist papers to the confraternity of privileged journals. That the Mir was subsidized by the German Government for the propaganda of international pacificism (this was in the summer of 1918) seems to have been established.[64] The closing chapter of the history of this paper is told in the following extract from Izvestia, October 17, 1918, which is more interesting for its disclosures of Bolshevist mentality than anything else:
[64] See Dumas, op. cit., p. 80.
The suppression of the paper Mir (Peace).—In accordance with the decision published in the Izvestia on the 27th July, No. 159, the Press Department granted permits to issue to periodical publications which accepted the Soviet platform. When granting permission the Press Department took into consideration the available supplies of paper, whether the population was in need of the proposed periodical publication, and also the necessity of providing employment for printers and pressmen. Thus permission was granted to issue the paper Mir, especially in view of the publisher’s declaration that the paper was intended to propagate pacifist ideas. At the present moment the requirements of the population of the Federal Socialist Republic for means of daily information are adequately met by the Soviet publications; employment for those engaged in journalistic work is secured in the Soviet papers; a paper crisis is approaching. The Press Department, therefore, considers it impossible to permit the further publication of the Mir and has decided to suppress this paper forever.
Another device which the Bolsheviki resorted to was the compulsion of people to purchase the official newspapers, whether they wanted them or not. On July 20, 1918, there was published “Obligatory Regulation No. 27,” which provided for the compulsory purchase by all householders of the Severnaya Communa. This unique regulation read as follows:
Obligatory Regulation No. 27
Every house committee in the city of Petrograd and other towns included in the Union of Communes of the Northern Region is under obligation to subscribe to, paying for same, one copy of the newspaper, the Severnaya Communa, the official organ of the Soviets of the Northern Region.
The newspaper should be given to every resident in the house on the first demand.
Chairman of the Union of the Communes of the Northern region, Gr. Zinoviev.
Commissary of printing, N. Kuzmin.
The Severnaya Communa, on November 10, 1918, published the following with reference to this beautiful scheme: