Censorship and coverage of judicial reform in the English and Russian press during the era of the Great Reforms of Alexander II

The article is devoted to a comparative study of how the censorship policy of the era of Alexander II determined the coverage of the judicial reform of 1864 in British and Russian periodicals. The analysis focuses on publications from The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, “Moskovskie Vedomosti,” and “Saint Petersburg Vedomosti” from 1858 to 1886. The central point of interest is the relationship between judicial and censorship reforms, as the principle of transparency in judicial proceedings was meant to connect the renewed legal system with the emerging public sphere. The study explores how different censorship regimes—the British tradition of press freedom and the Russian system of administrative control—affected the content and nature of public discourse surrounding judicial transformations, as well as the specific mechanisms of pressure on the press and rhetorical strategies employed by Russian editors. The work relies on historical-genetic and comparative-historical methods, discourse analysis, and content analysis of original newspaper materials, as well as the method of historical reconstruction of censorship practices. For the first time, a systematic comparative analysis of British and Russian newspaper coverage of the 1864 judicial reform has been conducted in its direct relation to the censorship restrictions of the era. It is shown that the press reform of 1865 created only the illusion of liberalization: the transition from prior restraint to subsequent censorship did not mean a rejection of state control, and the system of warnings and administrative oversight remained fully in place. The Russian press developed specific discursive strategies—differentiating criticism of individual officials from criticism of the system as a whole, appealing to officially proclaimed government principles, and using a language of euphemism. In contrast, the British press openly recorded the internal instability of the reformist compromise, pointing to the fundamental incompatibility of transparency in judicial proceedings with unrestricted autocracy. The study confirms that genuine transparency is impossible without press freedom, and that press freedom cannot exist without judicial protection against arbitrary administrative intervention. Thus, the work contributes to both the history of Russian journalism and the study of legal modernization mechanisms in the 19th century.