The article examines the institution of «press police» in the police law of the Russian Empire, as well as measures taken to tighten censorship in the late XIX – early XX century, as one of the ways to neutralize the socio-political situation in the country. The author analyzes the views of the most prominent Russian police officers: I. E. Andrievsky, N. N. Belyavsky, V. F. Deryuzhinsky, V. V. Ivanovsky, and I. T. Tarasov on the problem of restricting the rights and freedoms of the population, including freedom of speech and the press, under the conditions of the emergency legal regime of an exceptional situation. The author describes the significance of the exceptional position as a way to eliminate the extreme socio-political situation in the state, as well as a means of political prevention of the revolutionary threat to the state system. It is concluded that Russian state experts, in General, who advocated the development of the system of rights and freedoms of the population, in an extreme situation recognized the need to take measures to tighten censorship and restrict freedom of speech, however, in practice, this measure, even in conjunction with other protective measures, could not solve the problem of preserving the existing state system.