Using the example of the publication history of the “Karandash” magazine in the Saratov province (1906), the article considers the historical circumstances of the functioning of the satirical press in the administrative and legal space of the Russian province during the period of the first revolution. The paper analyzes the structure and content features of the satirical magazine, the publication of which was subordinated to the tasks of radical political agitation. Based on the newly identified, previously unpublished archival files from three collections of the State Archives of the Saratov Region, the vicissitudes of the “Heinrich case” (i. e., the trials that took place in 1907–1909 against K.E. Heinrich, the publisher of the “Karandash” magazine) were reconstructed.

The text of the article includes a commented publication of the fragments of the archival documents (the official correspondence of the press inspector, the prosecutor of the Saratov Judicial Chamber, of the Saratov governor; the judicial procedural materials of the Saratov Judicial Chamber). The records from the “Heinrich case” show the characteristic phenomena and the processes in the Russian society and the government institutions of the early 20th century: the clash of different systems of political and legal values; inconsistency between the government agencies, the censorship and the judicial system; a combination of lenient and acquittal court sentences with harsh administrative penalties; the general ineffectiveness of the administrative and legal measures against radical political agitation in the country.