War Propaganda: Russian Empire

In Russian Empire, there was no single coordinating body in government propaganda like the British War Propaganda Bureau. Three ministries were engaged in propaganda tasks, The Ministries of Internal Affairs (MVD), War, and Foreign Affairs. An Information Bureau in the Main Directorate for Press Affairs (GUDP) which existed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs supplied information to the press and in 1915 was reorganized into a Press Bureau. The MVD had at its disposition a secret fund which comprised about 1 million rubles in 1914-1915 and by 1916 had reached 1,600,000 rubles. Newspapers in Russia and abroad loyal to the government were supported by it.

The Department of Press and Information, which was addressed first of all to neutral countries and Slavs, handled propaganda in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In particular, it was the MFA that prepared the well-known 14 August 1914 appeal "To the Poles" distributed in the form of leaflets and postcards in the Polish lands of Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. However, on the whole, the work of the MFA in foreign propaganda was ineffective because of organizational difficulties.

War propaganda, concentrated in the 4th Department of the Quartermaster-General of the General Staff, was addressed to both the Slavic peoples and their own army. In 1915 a Press Bureau appeared in the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief to supply newspapers with propaganda materials. In 1916 a Special Conference to Influence Neutral Countries was created in the War Ministry. Propaganda was stepped up in 1915-1916 against the background of military failures; however, it was poorly coordinated and on the whole passive. An important direction of propaganda was the accusation that the enemy was violating the laws of war. In 1915 the Extraordinary Investigative Commission was created, which gathered evidence of this kind and published it in Russian, French, and English.

Along with government organizations, an important role in propaganda was played by the semi-official charitable Skobelev Committee, which operated especially active in the sphere of visual propaganda, in particular the production of postcards and reels of films. Besides government bodies there arose public organizations which conducted patriotic propaganda. The most famous of these was the "1914 Society", which fought "Germanism in Russian life".

Source: https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/propaganda_at_home_russian_empire