General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press

Main Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press under the Council of Ministers of the USSR (Russian: Главное управление по охране государственных тайн в печати при СМ СССР) was the official censorship and state secret protection organ in the Soviet Union.

[1] The censorship agency was established in 1922 under the name "Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs at the RSFSR Narkompros", abbreviated as Glavlit (Главлит).

Since the word "Glavlit" hints at "literature", the organization is often confused with Goskomizdat, which performed another type of censorship: it controlled the political content in fiction, poetry, etc.

The function of Glavlit was to prevent publications of information that could compromise state secrets in books, newspapers and other printed matter, as well as in radio and TV broadcasting.

In the late Soviet Union, at institutions and enterprises the immediate censorship was performed by the so-called First Departments controlled by KGB.