General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press


Main Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press under the Council of Ministers of the USSR was the official censorship and state secret protection organ in the Soviet Union. The censorship agency was established in 1922 under the name "Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs at the RSFSR Narkompros", abbreviated as Glavlit. The latter term was in semiofficial use until the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Since the word "Glavlit" hints at "literature", the organization is often confused with Goskomizdat, which performed another type of censorship: it controlled the political content in fiction, poetry, etc.

Chronology of names

  • 1922: Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs under the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR :
  • 1946: Administration for the Protection of Military and State Secrets in the Press under the USSR Council of Ministers.
  • 1953: Main Administration for the Protection of Military and State Secrets in the Press under the USSR Council of Ministers.
  • 1966: Main Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press under the USSR Council of Ministers.

    Functions

The function of Glavlit was to prevent publications of information that could compromise state secrets in books, newspapers and other printed matter, as well as in radio and TV broadcasting.
There existed a special list of kinds of information forbidden for publication in sources open for the general public. Initially there were three major categories of secret information: military, economical and "other". In later lists these were detailed further, e.g., "finance", "politics", "science and engineering", etc. were added. The first version of the list was decreed on October 13, 1921, before the creation of Glavlit, when censorship was a duty of a department of Vecheka. This list was updated several times. There were the following categories of secrecy: "top secret", "secret", and "not for disclosure".
Historian Michael McConnell - expert in the Bolshevik Consolidation of Power - noted that "Glavlit were ruthless in their enforcement of media censorship, having largely repressive implications for opposing parties and ideologies"
In addition, for the purposes of the law the secrets were classified into "state secrets", "military secrets", and "official secrets".
Glavlit performed its functions via regional offices. In the late Soviet Union, at institutions and enterprises the immediate censorship was performed by the so-called First Departments controlled by KGB. In fact, tight cooperation of Soviet secret services and Glavlit was unbroken from the very beginning.

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