The First Department (russian: Первый отдел) was in charge of secrecy and political security of the workplace of every enterprise or institution of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
that dealt with any kind of technical or scientific information (
plant
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae excl ...
s,
R&D institutions, etc.) or had printing capabilities (e.g.,
publishing house
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
s).
Every branch of the Central Statistical Administration and its successor the State Statistics Committee (
Goskomstat
The Federal State Statistics Service (russian: Федеральная служба государственной статистики (Росстат), ''Federal'naya sluzhba gosudarstvennoi statistiki (Rosstat)'') is the governmental statistics ...
) also had a First Department to control access, distribution, and publication of official economic, population, and social statistics. Copies of especially sensitive documents were numbered and labeled or stamped as secret or "For official use only". In some cases, the "official use" version of documents mimicked the public use versions in format but provided much more detailed information.
[A description of the operations of the First Department within statistical offices can be found in Barbara A. Anderson, Kalev Katus, and Brian D. Silver, "Developments and Prospects for Population Statistics in Countries of the Former Soviet Union," ''Population Index'' 60, No. 1 (Spring 1994): 4-20.]
The first departments were a part of the
KGB and not subordinated to the management of the enterprise or institution. Among its functions was control of access to information considered state secret, of foreign travel, and of publications. The First Department also kept account of the usage of copying devices (
xerographers,
printing press
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the ...
es,
typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
s, etc.) to prevent unsanctioned copying, including
samizdat
Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the document ...
.
See also
*
Censorship
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...
*
Spetskhran
Spetskhran (russian: Спецхран an abbreviation for "Special Storage Section", отдел специального хранения) were limited access collections and archival reserves in libraries and archives of the Soviet Union, as pa ...
References
Soviet internal politics
Soviet phraseology
Data security
KGB
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