This article deals with the analysis of main stages of the development of the institution of censorship both in the world practice and in the Russian Federation. The author states that censorship has an ambivalent potential. The author makes a conclusion that censorship is an effective mechanism to administer the information sphere, as well as the direction of its potential is largely determined by the socio-cultural and legal contexts. Modern political and legal reality of the Russian Federation is characterized by a formally negative attitude towards censorship as a practice of state administration, which is explicitly demonstrated in its legislative prohibition. At the same time, the realities of modern world represented by threats to national security from Russia’s geopolitical enemies, who openly declare their goals “to defeat Russia strategically” and actively use the possibilities of informational and ideological influence on the population of their opponents, dictate the necessity to establish a special legal institution capable to effectively protect the information sphere of the state from destructive information. Legal censorship has the potential of such an institution as a legally based filter of the country’s information sphere from malicious information.