Anastasia
Anastasia was the gentle-seeming name used to describe censorship, one of many daily realities of wartime. The War Ministry began a censorship campaign in order to ensure the security of the armed forces. It primarily involved correspondence and the press and lasted from the beginning of the war until 1919. It was critical to prevent leaks of strategic information about troop movements. Newspapers were sometimes forced to delete portions of articles and, because of a lack of time to edit them, they appeared with white spaces. Discretion was necessary even in the streets and shops because of a fear of spies. But censorship and propaganda also had the “psychological” advantage of avoiding discouraging the population. Writers and artists sometimes felt constrained, however, and expressed their resentment by caricaturing Anastasia as a character wielding scissors.
