Russian Bloggers: Working the Net

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Terentyev's and Shevyakov's are not isolated cases.

In 2006, the authorities in Ivanovo region in central Russia forced the website www.cursiv.ru to close for several months after its editor, journalist Vladimir Rakhmankov, published a satirical article calling President Vladimir Putin the nation's phallic symbol. The article was about the government's attempts to increase the birthrate. Rakhmankov was also ordered to pay 24,000 rubles in damages for "insulting the president."

And on 23 May, the Novosibirsk regional court ordered four websites shut down for distributing extremist materials.

ONLINE SPIES

The number of Internet users in Russia has skyrocketed from an estimated 6 million in 2000 to 28 million today, and that number could nearly double by 2010 according to the Communications Ministry.

The Russian site of LiveJournal has 400,000 registered users, while the site's readership amounts to nearly 10 million people, said Anton Nosik, one of the site's most popular Russian bloggers. Russia holds second place after the United States in the number of users on the blog-hosting portal.

Ruslan Linkov, head of the liberal organization Democratic Russia and also a LiveJournal blogger, said Internet spies on the lookout for potential victims are becoming abundant. LiveJournal is getting permeated with false blogs created by "spies," he said.

"False blogs are easy to spot," Linkov said. "They are lifeless; these blogs typically have barely any content at all. … The scarce content that is there is mostly blatantly provocative in character, with the aim of encouraging other bloggers to expose their views."

Linkov knows that his blog, which he uses to publicize reported cases of abuse of human rights as well as to share personal stories, is being closely monitored by law enforcement.

"The police or security agents call me every now and then to express their indignation at my opinions, or the stories that I tell," he said. "Sometimes they ask me to clarify a fact or detail about the cases of human rights abuses I am describing.

"This attention is both sickening and funny: once, when I was vacationing in France, an army general was heard describing my holiday adventures to a friend," Linkov said.

"My colleagues who work on websites representing the liberal opposition have also noticed the massive presence of spies and provocateurs in their blogs," he said. "And during telephone conversations the police and security agents make no secret of their interest. At the same time, nationalist websites flourish and do not seem to get in trouble."

260 NEW BLOGS EVERY HOUR

More and more people are turning to blogs and Internet forums when seeking reliable information. According to Technorati, a site that tracks blog traffic, 2 million Russian blogs already exist online, and this year 260 new blogs are being added every hour – 6,000 every day – compared to 100 per hour in the autumn of 2006.

Nearing the December 2007 parliamentary elections and March 2008 presidential elections, the importance of control over the media is growing.

Former chess champion Garry Kasparov, one of the leaders of opposition coalition The Other Russia, says Putin's high approval rating among the public is based on the level of ignorance that most Russians have about the way their country is governed, and that media censorship plays a key role in protecting the authorities.

"One month of honest television debates discussing the true state of corruption in the country, and the concentration of financial resources in the hands of the closest relatives of members of the ruling political elite, would result in the immediate collapse of Putin's approval rating," Kasparov told a news conference in April. "The fast-expanding Internet is dangerous for the authorities as it effectively spreads the word about the level of corruption in Russia, especially in the provinces."

Mario Corti, former head of the Russian service of Radio Liberty and now a consultant for the Baltic Media Group in Russia, said that laws that restrict freedom of speech, including hate speech, exist in many democratic countries and it would be unfair to single out Russia in this particular case.

It is generally in undemocratic states, however, that people go to jail for online commentary. According to a survey by the international press-freedom advocate Reporters Without Borders, 52 people are currently in jail in China for posting critical comments against the authorities on the Internet. Internet users have also been imprisoned for putting controversial content online in Iran, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Vietnam, and a Belarusian former parliamentarian, Andrei Klimau, was arrested in April for allegedly calling for the overthrow of the government online.

Corti regards the prosecutor's office reaction to the Terentyev case as disproportionate, wasteful, and petty. "We are talking about a powerful organization promoting a case against an impulsive young person," he said. "There are a great number of serious criminal cases that remain unsolved. And I would certainly like to see more representatives of the law enforcement agencies prosecuted and punished when they commit abuses."

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