"The Council of the People's Deputies immediately removed some of the Empire's harsh restrictions, such as on freedom of expression". can you list exactly what these restrictions were
Executive summary
The phrase that “The Council of the People’s Deputies immediately removed some of the Empire’s harsh restrictions, such as on freedom of expression” conflates actions by different bodies in different moments; contemporary source material documents concrete reforms the Council enacted—universal suffrage (including women) and social measures like the eight‑hour day—but does not supply a definitive, itemized list of pre‑existing press or speech restrictions that it explicitly rescinded at once [1] [2]. Reporting on later bodies called “Congress/Council of People’s Deputies” in the Soviet era shows explicit repeal of censorship and declaration of press freedoms in 1989–91, revealing how similar names and reform narratives are often blended together in secondary accounts [3] [4].
1. Which “Council” is under discussion — why the name matters
The sources supplied refer to at least two distinct institutions called variants of “Council/Congress of the People’s Deputies”: the November 1918 German Council of People’s Deputies that replaced imperial government functions after the fall of the German Empire, and much later Soviet and post‑Soviet Congresses of People’s Deputies that undertook glasnost‑era reforms in 1989–1991; conflating them risks attributing reforms from one era to another and produces misleading statements about what was “immediately removed” [2] [4] [3].
2. What the German Council actually did — concrete, documented removals and reforms
Primary summary sources for the German Council of People’s Deputies in November 1918 document the body taking over government functions and issuing decrees in lieu of Reichstag legislation, and they list immediate social and political reforms it promised or introduced, notably the introduction of universal suffrage that for the first time enfranchised women and the guarantee of an eight‑hour workday, along with pledges to safeguard personal freedom and safety, improve food and housing supply, and protect property against private infringement [1] [2]. Those entries state the Council “promised” and “introduced” these measures, which are concrete policy rollouts recorded in encyclopedic and archival summaries of the Council’s first days [1].
3. What the record does not show about an immediate repeal of speech laws in 1918
Nowhere in the provided material is there a clear, contemporaneous, itemized order from the German Council explicitly listing and revoking specific imperial censorship statutes or enumerating the “harsh restrictions” on freedom of expression that were immediately annulled; the German Council’s documented emphases are on suffrage and social legislation, and the sources do not produce a verbatim decree rescinding particular press laws from the Empire [1] [2]. Separately, debates among Bolsheviks in 1917 show how restrictions on the press were both present and intensely contested in that revolutionary moment, but those texts concern Soviet/Russian policy debates rather than the German Council’s acts and do not prove an immediate repeal by the German body [5].
4. Why later bodies are often cited — the Soviet Congresses and the explicit repeal of censorship
By contrast, the Congress of People’s Deputies created during Gorbachev’s perestroika moved explicitly to repeal censorship and declare freedom of the press in 1989–1991; historians note that the successive congresses repealed Article 6 and abolished state censorship as part of glasnost, and deputies used newfound freedom of speech to criticize the state in televised sessions [3] [4]. Secondary narratives that reuse the phrase about “removing harsh restrictions” may therefore be drawing on the Soviet‑era example and projecting it back onto other Councils with similar names, producing the conflation that prompted the original question [3] [4].
5. Bottom line and limits of the available reporting
The best available sources demonstrate that the German Council of People’s Deputies implemented immediate political and social reforms—universal suffrage including women’s voting rights, the eight‑hour day, and pledges to safeguard personal freedoms and public order—but do not provide a sourced, item‑by‑item list of imperial censorship statutes that it formally revoked on day one; explicit, documented repeals of censorship appear clearly in accounts of the late‑Soviet Congresses of People’s Deputies rather than in the German 1918 Council records, meaning that claims that the 1918 Council “immediately removed” Empire press restrictions are not supported by the cited material [1] [2] [5] [3]. Additional primary documents (contemporary decrees, legal texts) would be required to catalogue any specific imperial speech laws rescinded, and those are not present among the supplied sources [1] [2].