When the Germans, after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, still continued their offensive movement, occupying one Russian city after another, and the Bolsheviki had reasons to believe that they were nearing their end, they somewhat relaxed their régime and some newspapers obtained the possibility of appearing again, _on condition that all such newspapers, under threat of fine and confiscation, were to print on their first pages all the Bolshevist decrees and all distorted information and explanations by the Bolshevist commissaries_. Aside from that, the press was subject to huge fines for every bit of news that did not please the eye of the Bolshevist censor. Thus, for instance, _Novaya Zhizn_, Gorky’s organ, was fined 35,000 rubles for a certain piece of “unfavorable” news which it printed. However, early in May, 1918--_i.e._, _before the beginning of the so-called “intervention” by the Allies_--even this measure of “freedom” of the press appeared too frivolous for the Bolshevist commissaries, and they permanently closed down _Dyelo Naroda_, _Dien_, and _Novy Looch_, and, somewhat later, all the remaining opposition papers, including Gorky’s _Novaya Zhizn_, and since that time none of them have reappeared. In spite of endless attempts, Maxim Gorky did not succeed in obtaining permission to establish his paper even six months afterward, when he had officially made peace with the Soviet régime. The Bolsheviki are afraid of the free speech of even their official “friends,” and that is the true reason why there is not in Soviet Russia to-day a single independent organ of the press.[62] [62] April, 1919. With one kick of the Red Army boot was thus destroyed Russia’s greatest treasure, her independent press. The oldest and greatest founts of Russian culture and social justice, such as the monthly magazine, _Russkoye Bogatstvo_, and the daily _Russkya Viedomosti_, which even the Czar’s government never dared to suppress permanently, were brutally strangled. These organs have raised entire generations of Russian radicals and Socialists and had among their contributors and editors the greatest savants, publicists, and journalists of Russia, such as Nicholas Chernishevsky, Glieb Uspensky, Nicholas Mikhailovsky, N. Zlatovratsky, Ilya Metchnikov, Professor N. Kareiev, Vladimir Korolenko, Peter Kropotkin, and numerous others.