R Ussian O Utlook
Spring 2011 Nyetizdat: How the Internet Is Building Civil Society in Russia By Leon Aron In the past decade, Russia has experienced explosive growth in the spread of the Internet and its applica- tions. As in other authoritarian regimes, where the national media are state controlled, censored, or self- censored, the Russian “net” has become “a shelter in the world of censorship.”1 In this “shelter” capacity, “Ru.net,” as it is known in Russia, is reminiscent of samizdat (literally, “self-publishing”), an under- ground network of banned fiction and nonfiction copied and clandestinely disseminated in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. Samizdat was central to preserving at least a trickle of uncensored infor- mation during the bleakest years of the Brezhnev “stagnation,” and in doing so paved the way for pere- stroika and glasnost. In breaking outside the perimeter of officially sanctioned public debate, Ru.net harks back to its legendary predecessor. It thus may be named nyetizdat, since in Russian “no” and “net” have Russian Outlook Russian an identical spelling and sound.2 Growing daily in penetration and sophistication, nyetizdat is a major and evolving factor in Russian politics today and, even more so, tomorrow. f course, just as today’s authoritarian Russia Ois not the totalitarian Soviet Union of the 1970s, so too does nyetizdat differ from samizdat, Key points in this Outlook: not only in its medium but also in the regime’s • Russia can be divided into two nations: the management of it. Unlike the producers and con- “television nation” and the “Internet nation.” sumers of nyetizdat, those caught publishing, dis- Although most Russians still get their daily seminating, and reading samizdat could be fired from their jobs and expelled from colleges; at news from television, the minority who rely worst they were sent to prisons and camps.
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