Wprowadzenie cenzury prewencyjnej w 1920 roku w dawnej dzielnicy pruskiej

Abstract

During the restitution of the Polish Statehood in 1918, the individual provinces maintained the laws of the previous occupying powers with regard to regulating the freedom of the press and specific procedures of the oversight that state authorities had over the press activities. Since January 1919, there was an option to impose a confiscation of any publication in the part of Polish Republic, in which a martial law was in effect. This route, allowing for the introduction of preventive censorship, was used in June 1919 by the Supreme People’s Council, an organization that was in power in the Wielkopolska district (of the former Prussian partition). The volatile situation at the front of the Polish–Bolshevik war prompted the Polish authorities to uniform the laws regarding preventive censorships. Subsequently, the Council of National Defense issued on July 19th, 1920 a decree introducing the preventive censorship on the territory of the Polish state. Despite the lack of respective executive directives from the Ministries of Internal Affairs and Ministry of Former Prussian Partition, the Poznań city mayor [starosta grodzki] started implementing the preventive censorship regulations already on July 22, 1920. These restrictions pertained to publications relevant to the army and matters of state defense. However, the implementation of these regulations was aborted after the Polish Parliament approved on October 29, 1920 a bill abolishing a preventive censorship. Nonetheless, the Wielkoposka district waited until November 25, 1920 when the Poznań city mayor [starosta grodzki] issued a document revoking his previous decree about preventive censorship.