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Decree “On free press” issued
January 15 (26), 1783 Empress Catherine II issued a decree "On free press" that allowed individuals to engage in publishing activities.
According to the decree, private printing houses could be opened up not only in the two capitals – St. Petersburg and Moscow, but also in all cities and towns of the Russian Empire. By law, a printing house was equal to a factory, which entitled individuals to start a press. The main provision of the decree was to allow any person to start printing according to his will.
It was allowed "in these printers to print books in Russian and foreign languages, including oriental ones ...". At the same time, the law strengthened the role of the police: now it was controlling the content of printed products, forbid it, if any violation was discovered in it and confiscated printed materials issued without its permission.
Within a few years in St. Petersburg, there were about 20 private printers, the largest among them was the printing press of I. K. Schnor, which had released over 230 publications in Russian. Private printing presses were owned most often by professional publishers, booksellers, writers (K. V. Miller, I. P. and M. P. Glazunovs, P. I. Bogdanovich, I. A. Krylov, I. G. Rachmaninoff, A. N. Radishchev, etc.). Best known is publishing activity of N. I. Novikov, who headed several printing houses in Moscow: the Universitetsky printing house, which he rented; his own free printing press, organized by Typographic company; the free printing press owned by Lopukhin; the print shop of the secret Masonic lodge.
The main products of private printing houses were fairy tales, adventure novels, horoscopes, books on housekeeping, chiromancy books and educational literature. Circulation ranged from 100 to 20 000 copies. Equipment was purchased abroad, fonts partly cast in St. Petersburg.
Permission to open a free press was the favorable impetus to the development of education in Russia. However, the state still applied a fairly cumbersome and decentralized structure of the censorship apparatus.
The Decree 1783 had functioned for thirteen years. In September 1796, Catherine II, when faced with the active development of book publishing in the country, the rapid growth of the "free printers” and “the abuses resulting of it”, signed a “Decree on the restriction of the freedom of printing and importation of foreign books, on the establishment of censorship ... and the abolition of private printing houses”.
Lit.: Блюм А. В. Издательская деятельность русской провинции конца XVIII – начала XIX в. (Основные тематические направления и цензурно-правовое положение) // Книга. Исследования и материалы. М., 1966. Сб. 12. С. 136–159; Самарин А. Ю. Под каким присмотром и цензурою печатание книг происходит: типографское дело и цензура в России эпохи Просвещения // Новое литературное обозрение. 2008. N 4. С. 356–375.
Based on the Presidential Library’s materials: