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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. Samiz- on the Internet are more politically engaged. dat counted tens of thousands of readers; nyetizdat, • The Internet is the backbone of civil soci- millions. Perhaps most importantly, unlike samiz- ety in Russia—giving people both a voice dat, the Russian Web is indispensible not just for the dissemination of information and uncensored and the tools to self-organize—and it is a national debate; with open democratic politics a growing force against authoritarianism. sham, the Internet has rapidly evolved into the • Russian authorities allow social and politi- main alternative public platform and the engine cal movements on the Internet that are of grassroots self-organization, at once a national not permitted in real life, perhaps to allow “town hall” and party headquarters, vital to the emergence and maintenance of thousands of people to “let off steam.” The Internet is social and political movements.3 already a major factor in Russian politics— and its influence is growing almost daily. Leon Aron ([email protected]) is a resident scholar and the director of Russian studies at AEI. 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 202.862.5800 www.aei.org - 2 - Penetration and Dynamics instance, in 2010, 62 percent of eighteen- to twenty- four-year-olds were regular Web users16—or between 1.3 The Russian Communication and Press Ministry puts the and 1.6 times the national rate for all adults. Education number of regular Internet users in 2010 at 66 million, or is almost as good a predictor as age: among those with 46 percent of the population.4 According to far more higher education or unfinished higher education (that is, reliable public opinion surveys conducted in the winter mostly, those still in college), 55 percent used the Inter- and spring of 2011, among those eighteen years and older, net, compared with 17 percent among those with only a 38–43 percent (44–50 million people) use the Internet high school education.17 In large cities like Moscow and “regularly” (at least once a month),5 which translates St. Petersburg, the penetration rate is 65 percent.18 into an Internet penetration rate among the total popu- Of course, almost three times as many Russians (84 per- lation between 31 and 35 percent. (By comparison, cent) watch government-controlled television (which according to the United Nations International Telecom- filters and slants its content in support of the Kremlin munication Union, an agency for information and com- and bars key opposition leaders, journalists, and experts) munications technology issues, the penetration rate in as log on daily (31 percent).19 The gap is wider still the United States was 77 percent: 240 million regular when it comes to following the news: an estimated 94 per- users in a population of 311 million.)6 Within the same cent of the population turns to the television and only group of those eighteen years and older, 40 percent 9 percent to the Internet.20 Nyetizdat is somewhat more (46 million) use the Internet once a week, while 31 per- popular as a news source with those between ages twenty- cent (36 million) use it daily.7 five and thirty-nine (10 percent), Muscovites (12 per- Since the first survey of Internet usage in winter cent), those with higher education (13 percent), and the 2003–2004, the number of monthly users has increased “wealthier” (16 percent).21 more than fourfold.8 There are almost eight times more weekly users today than seven years ago, and the number Samizdat counted tens of thousands of people who log on daily has grown almost ten times.9 When the shares of Russia’s most popular website, the of readers; nyetizdat, millions. search engine Yandex.ru, went on sale for the first time on the Nasdaq stock exchange on May 24, 2011, their price increased 55 percent by the end of the day, raising Yet, although “only 20 percent” of Russians may get $1.3 billion for the company, which was started by a their daily news from the Internet (in perhaps the overly mathematician and a geophysicist in 1997.10 optimistic estimate of Alexei Navalny, the most popu- Social media are expanding rapidly as well. The lar Russian blogger and anticorruption crusader), these Facebook-like site V Kontakte (“in touch”) is fifth among 20 percent are the “politically active class,” the people Russia’s five hundred most popular sites, followed by who are “the drivers of political change.”22 There are YouTube (sixth) and Facebook (seventh).11 Twitter is two nations in Russia today, Dmitri Muratov, editor of number seventeen, and its growth has been “exponen- Novaya gazeta, Russia’s only national opposition news- tial.”12 Russian social media are among the fastest grow- paper, said to me in February in Moscow: the “television ing in the world,13 and Russian Internet users are said to nation” and the “Internet nation.”23 be among the most “engaged social networking audi- ences worldwide”—the percentage of those using Democratic Opposition and the “social” sites and the amount of time they spend on Opposition Media them are among the highest in the world.14 The “Internet nation” is an avid consumer of independ- A Tale of Two Nations ent and opposition news and commentary. Every major “unregistered” national opposition party or movement— As in most countries, the most frequent and fastest- Solidarity (Solidarnost), Strategy-31 (Strategiya-31), or the growing engagement with the Web has occurred in Party of People’s Freedom (Partiya narodnoy svobody)— demographic segments that tend to be politically active: has its own website, and its leaders blog regularly, as do younger, better educated, concentrated in the largest dozens of other prodemocracy intellectuals, essayists, and urban centers, and middle and upper-middle class.15 For journalists on independent or opposition sites.24 These - 3 - include Ej.ru (the site of Ezhednevnyi zhurnal, or Daily Virtually all the most popular bloggers (and, since Janu- Journal; ezh means “hedgehog” in Russian); Newtimes.ru ary 2009, Medvedev) post on LiveJournal, which Inter- (the New Times magazine), Grani.ru (“facets”), Gazeta.ru net expert and prominent opposition blogger Anton (“newspaper”), Kommersant.ru (the site of an independ- Nossik called “the only uncensored, uncontrolled, and ent newspaper of the same name), EkhoMoskvy.ru (“The unmoderated channel for discussion.”32 Echo of Moscow,” the only national opposition radio channel), and, of course, NovayaGazeta.ru. Of these “I, like any person, can be frightened, sites, Ekho Moskvy is the most popular, with 3,485,948 visitors per month as of April (Russia’s sixteenth most bribed, removed, and so on, but this popular news and commentary site overall), followed by should not bring our activity to a halt.” Novaya gazeta (810,184 visitors, sixty-first overall), Grani.ru (758,256 visitors, sixty-seventh overall), and Ej.ru (272,912 visitors, 144th overall).25 In January Few, if any, topics are as prevalent in nyetizdat as gov- 2011, Novaya gazeta announced triumphantly that its ernment corruption. “For me, there are no opportunities site, which started daily updates in January, was visited to publish [in newspapers and magazines] materials about by the 40 millionth reader, while average weekly reader- corruption in, say, Gazprom or Transneft,” Navalny said ship reached 420,000–450,000.26 in April. “Through LiveJournal, I can bring this informa- Of late, independent and opposition media have tion to a few million people, which is comparable to a branched into the social networking space. Novaya television audience.”33 Navalny’s most recent and widely gazeta, for instance, now has a Facebook page, which, as popular anticorruption project is RosPil—a pun on of this writing, was “liked” by 25,925 Facebook visitors.27 “Rossiya” (Russia) and “raspilivat” (slang for dividing When the Novaya gazeta site was attacked by hackers in stolen money among government officials).
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