The Russian internet (also known as the

runet The Russian Internet () or Runet (), is the part of the Internet that uses the Russian language, including the Russian-language community on the Internet and websites. Geographically, it reaches all continents, including Antarctica (due to Russ ...

) is a part of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

with its main content in Russian. According to data from August 2019 and studies conducted by W3Techs, 6.5% of the 10 million most popular Internet sites in the world use Russian. In 2013, according to these studies, the Russian language became the second most used on the Internet after English.

Background

In the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, the first computer networks appeared in the 1950s in

missile defense Missile defense is a system, weapon, or technology involved in the detection, tracking, interception, and also the destruction of attacking missiles. Conceived as a defense against nuclear weapon, nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic mi ...

system at

Sary Shagan Sary Shagan (; ) is an anti-ballistic missile testing range located in Kazakhstan. On 17 August 1956 the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union authorized plans for an experimental facility for missile defence located at Sary Shagan, on the w ...

(first they were tested in Moscow at

Lebedev Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering Lebedev Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering (IPMCE) is a Russian research institution. It used to be a Soviet Academy of Sciences organization in Soviet times. The institute specializes itself in the development of: * Compute ...

). 1957

Sputnik crisis The Sputnik crisis was a period of public fear and anxiety in Western nations about the perceived technological gap between the United States and Soviet Union caused by the Soviets' launch of '' Sputnik 1'', the world's first artificial sate ...

contributed to development of computer networks both in USSR and USA. The

Sputnik-1 Sputnik 1 (, , ''Satellite 1''), sometimes referred to as simply Sputnik, was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program ...

online trajectory digital data was collected at 70 tracking stations, transmitted binarily via

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...

and then calculated at the Computing Centre of the Academy of Sciences. In the 1960s, the massive computer network project called

OGAS OGAS (, "National Automated System for Computation and Information Processing") was a Soviet project to create a nationwide information network. The project began in 1962 but was denied necessary funding in 1970. It was one of a series of sociali ...

was proposed but failed to be implemented, though stimulating development of pack of structures such as

Gosplan The State Planning Committee, commonly known as Gosplan ( ), was the agency responsible for economic planning, central economic planning in the Soviet Union. Established in 1921 and remaining in existence until the dissolution of the Soviet Unio ...

Computing Centre established in 1959.

Apollo–Soyuz Apollo–Soyuz was the first crewed international Space exploration, space mission, carried out jointly by the United States and the Soviet Union in July 1975. Millions of people around the world watched on television as an American Apollo comm ...

USA–USSR joint space program (1972–1975) used digital data for spaceships monitoring and control and they were transmitted between participating countries via satellite links that were connected to ground networks consisting of nodes such as

Star City, Russia Star City () is an area in Zvyozdny gorodok (urban-type settlement), Zvyozdny gorodok, Moscow Oblast, Russia, which has since the 1960s been home to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC). Officially, the area was known as "closed ...

and Houston space center. Since 1972, Sirena and

Express Express, The Expresss or EXPRESS may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Film * ''Express: Aisle to Glory'', a 1998 comedy short film featuring Kal Penn * ''The Express: The Ernie Davis Story'', a 2008 film starring Dennis Quaid * The Expre ...

computer networks began nationwide operations connecting thousands of airline and railroad cash offices all over the country provided with keyboards, displays and printers for tickets. Later on, since the late 1970s,

x.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for Packet switched network, packet-switched data communication in wide area network, wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the CCITT, International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Co ...

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

networks began to appear and

Akademset Akademset (, Academic Network), or All-USSR, Union Academic network — was a computer network for providing Digital signal, digital connection of scientific and civil institutions across the USSR, that was established in 1978. In fact, it was a ...

emerged in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

in 1978. By 1982

VNIIPAS The All Union Scientific Research Institute for Applied Automated Systems (VNIIPAS/ВНИИПАС) was a Soviet research institute that provided a computer network service, including international digital connections. It was the central node of i ...

institute was created in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

to serve as Akademset's central node, which in 1978 established x.25 permanent digital ground

copper cable Copper has been used in electrical wiring since the invention of the electromagnet and the telegraph in the 1820s. The invention of the telephone in 1876 created further demand for copper wire as an electrical conductor. Copper is the electri ...

connection to

IIASA The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is an independent International research institute located in Laxenburg, near Vienna in Austria, founded as an East-West scientific cooperation initiative during the Cold War. Th ...

Laxenburg __NOTOC__ Laxenburg (Central Bavarian: ''Laxnbuag'') is a market town in the district of Mödling, in the Austrian state of Lower Austria. Located about south of the Austrian capital Vienna, it is chiefly known for the Laxenburg castles, which, be ...

, Austria providing 9600

baud In telecommunications and electronics, baud (; symbol: Bd) is a common unit of measurement of symbol rate, which is one of the components that determine the speed of communication over a data channel. It is the unit for symbol rate or modulat ...

link which was divided by 4800 baud between USSR and

ČSSR The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, (Czech and Slovak: ''Československá socialistická republika'', ČSSR) known from 1948 to 1960 as the Czechoslovak Republic (''Československá republika)'', Fourth Czechoslovak Republic, or simply Czech ...

(that allowed access to other worldwide networks). In 1983, VNIIPAS, together with the US government, Joel Schatz, Don Carlson, Michael Kleeman, and Chet Watson, created a Soviet X.25 service provider called SFMT ("San Francisco — Moscow Teleport") that later became

Sovam Teleport The Internet in Russia, Russian internet (also known as the runet) is a part of the Internet with its main content in Russian. According to data from August 2019 and studies conducted by W3Techs, 6.5% of the 10 million most popular Internet sites ...

("Soviet-American Teleport"). VNIIPAS also provided X.25 services, including over satellite, to

Eastern bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were a ...

countries together with Mongolia, Cuba and Vietnam. At the time, Western users of

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

were generally unaware of that, and considered such networking in USSR nonexistent, so one of them on April 1, 1984, made an April fools' hoax about "

Kremvax Kremvax was originally a fictitious Usenet site at the Moscow Kremlin, Kremlin, named like the then large number of Usenet VAXen with names of the form ''foo''vax. Kremvax was announced on April 1, 1984, in a posting ostensibly originated there by ...

" ("

Kremlin The Moscow Kremlin (also the Kremlin) is a fortified complex in Moscow, Russia. Located in the centre of the country's capital city, the Moscow Kremlin (fortification), Kremlin comprises five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Mosco ...

VAX VAX (an acronym for virtual address extension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The V ...

") that gained some popularity for subsequent years. The first recorded Usenet message from USSR dates 26.12.1989. Later the USSR nominally joined the private

Fidonet __ / \ /, oo \ (_, /_) _`@/_ \ _ , , \ \\ , (*) , \ )) ______ , __U__, / \// / FI ...

network in October 1990 when the first

node In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a vertex). Node may refer to: In mathematics * Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph *Vertex (geometry), a point where two or more curves, lines ...

of ''Region 50'' appeared in

Novosibirsk Novosibirsk is the largest city and administrative centre of Novosibirsk Oblast and the Siberian Federal District in Russia. As of the 2021 Russian census, 2021 census, it had a population of 1,633,595, making it the most populous city in Siber ...

. Some of the early Soviet/Russian networks were also initiated as parts of

BITNET BITNET was a co-operative United States, U.S. university computer network founded in 1981 by Ira Fuchs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and Greydon Freeman at Yale University. The first network link was between CUNY and Yale. Backgrou ...

Foundation of the Russian Internet

Sovam Teleport

Sovam Teleport is a Russian telecommunications company that was founded in 1990. The company was established as a joint venture of the San Francisco Moscow Teleport network and the All-Russian Research Institute of Automated Application Systems (ВНИИПАС). The name stands for "SOViet-AMerican Teleport". San Francisco Moscow Teleport (SFMT) was launched in 1983 by and Joel Schatz with the support of the US government. It was a non-profit project with a goal to expand the Internet to the USSR. In 1986, the project changed its status and became a commercial enterprise, with financing from

George Soros George Soros (born György Schwartz; August 12, 1930) is an American investor and philanthropist. , he has a net worth of US$7.2 billion, Note that this site is updated daily. having donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundat ...

added in 1988. The All-Russian Research Institute of Automated Application Systems provided a data transmission network with some countries in Eastern Europe, as well as Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam, almost all of the data traffic was scientific and technical information, and in 1983 organized a non-state email network. By the beginning of the 1990s, almost half of the VNII traffic amounted to operational data from electronic mail systems. The

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

newspaper on February 19, 1989 on its first page published article "New Satellite Channel Opens Computer Link to the Soviets" by

John Markoff John Gregory Markoff (born October 24, 1949) is a journalist best known for his work covering technology at ''The New York Times'' for 28 years until his retirement in 2016, and a book and series of articles about the 1990s pursuit and capture ...

that highlighted VNIIPAS/IIASA/Sovam network development with adding of

Tymnet Tymnet was an international data communications network developed and operated by Tymshare. It was based at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. The network used packet-switching techniques, including statistical multiplexing, an ...

and

Sprint Sprint may refer to: Aerospace * Spring WS202 Sprint, a Canadian aircraft design *Sprint (missile), an anti-ballistic missile Automobiles *Alfa Romeo Sprint, automobile produced by Alfa Romeo between 1976 and 1989 *Chevrolet Sprint, a rebadged v ...

satellite nodes at

Central Telegraph PJSC Central Telegraph () is a Russian telecommunications company which provides different services such as fixed line telephony and internet access, IPTV, rental of communication channels, electrical documentation, integrated business solutions ...

. The company's first network was built on the X.25 protocol in 1990. In 1992, Sovam Teleport began to build a

UUCP UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy) is a suite of computer programs and communications protocol, protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of computer file, files, email and netnews between computers. A command named is one of the prog ...

mail and terminal access system through American servers. Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, DuPont, Estee Lauder, Time magazine, and France Presse were among the first corporate clients of the company. Since 1992, the British company Cable & Wireless, which has its own fiber-optic channels in Europe, has become the third co-founder of the company. On June 4, 1992, the company was re-registered as a limited liability partnership, and all three co-founders - Cable & Wireless, All-Russian Research Institute of Automated Application Systems and SFMT - received almost equal shares. On July 28, 1993, a communications center in Tashkent began servicing customers. The provider domain sovam.com, which opened on February 24, 1994, became the first public Internet site in Russia. Sovam Teleport in early 1990s became a first

SWIFT Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIF ...

network provider for emerging Russian banks (over x.25). In 1995 Sovam Teleport launched ''Russia Online'' (ROL) public

dial-up Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...

ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non ...

DEMOS-based network

After invading Afghanistan, the Soviet Union found itself under sanctions (already being limited by limited by

CoCom The Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) was established in 1949 at the beginning of the Cold War to coordinate controls on exports from Western Bloc countries to the Soviet Union and its allies. Operating through inform ...

). However, a group of developers made a Russian version of the Unix operating system, secretly brought from America, and called it

DEMOS Demos may refer to: Computing * DEMOS, a Soviet Unix-like operating system * DEMOS (ISP), the first internet service provider in the USSR * Demos Commander, an Orthodox File Manager for Unix-like systems * Plural for Demo (computer programming ...

. Some Unix developers, working at the Kurchatov Nuclear Energy Research Institute created a network that used DEMOS, namely

RELCOM RELCOM or Relcom (), an acronym for "RELiable COMmunications" is a computer network in Russia. Network It was launched in the Soviet Union on August 1, 1990 in the Kurchatov Institute in collaboration with DEMOS co-operative (although the enginee ...

. The main feature of this network was that it was a fully horizontal network, i.e. each networked computer could directly communicate with other computers on the network. Many labs took part in joint experiments, so rapid communication was very much needed. Therefore, the first network users were mainly Soviet research institutes, so they could exchange scientific information more rapidly.

Cityline

Cityline was one of the first internet providers in Russia that aimed to counter ROL's monopoly at public

market. It was founded in 1996 by Emelyan Zakharov, Demyan Kudryavcev, Egor Shuppe, Dmitriy Bosov and Rafael Filinov. The realization of the fact that the Internet was not appealing for Russian users without content led to content-oriented services. Cityline approached

Anton Nosik Anton Borisovich Nossik (; 4 July 1966 – 9 July 2017) was a Russian journalist, social activist and blogger (10th place in RuNet according to Yandex.Blogs ranking). Sometimes he is called one of the godfathers of the Russian Internet or the ...

, a journalist, and Anton would later create content for them. It led to a portal named 'Vechernii Internet' (Вечерний Интернет), where Anton Nosik published his articles. In addition, the very first Russian web designer was Artemy Lebedev, who designed websites for Cityline. One of the most popular websites on the Russian internet was Anekdot.ru, a website dedicated to humour and stories. Anekdot.ru was founded by astrophysicist Dmitrii Verner.

Search engines

Rambler

In 1996, the first Russian search engine,

Rambler Rambler or Ramble may refer to: Places * Rambler, Wyoming * Rambler Channel (藍巴勒海峽), separates Tsing Yi Island and the mainland New Territories in Hong Kong * The Ramble and Lake, Central Park, an area within New York City's Centra ...

was launched. It was created by Sergey Lysakov, Dmitry Kryukov and others, who worked as scientists in Pushchino research facility. The algorithm that served as a basis for Rambler initially was used for registering and searching for microorganisms. One of the key features was the so-called Rambler Top-100, that showed the one hundred top searched websites on the Russian internet. In the beginning of 1999, 53% of Rambler's shares were sold to investors Russian Fonds (Русские Фонды) and Orion Capital Advisors. As a result, the founders of the company became less important in the company. In 2000, as a result of the conflict between investors and the founders, Sergey Lysakov and Dmitry Kryukov left the company. Rambler later became a media company that included its own TV channel, the Rambler TV.

Yandex

September 23, 1997 — the Yandex search engine appeared, which performs a Russian search based on morphological analysis. With support by 1989-founded Comptek computer trader, the project has been formed since the early 1990s by scientists from Moscow research institutes who were engaged in machine analysis of texts (in particular, based on the work of academician Yuri Apresyan). One of their first big projects was a machine search of the Bible, as it is not protected by copyright. Ilya Segalovich and Arkadii Volozh developed a search algorithm that was based on the morphology of Russian language. Initially this algorithm was proposed to Rambler for approximately 15K dollars, but was rejected. After the rejection, Ilya and Arkady decided to found their own company,

Yandex Yandex LLC ( rus, Яндекс, r=Yandeks, p=ˈjandəks) is a Russian technology company that provides Internet-related products and services including a web browser, search engine, cloud computing, web mapping, online food ordering, streaming ...

. Key figures in the company:

Ilya Segalovich Ilya Valentinovich Segalovich (13 September 1964 – 27 July 2013) was a co-founder of Russian company Yandex. He was CTO and director of Yandex since 2000 until his death in 2013. Segalovich proposed the name “Yandex” for the search en ...

Arkady Volozh Arkady Yuryevich Volozh (; born 11 February 1964) is a Russian businessman, technology entrepreneur, computer scientist, investor and philanthropist. He pioneered the development of search and navigation technology as well as intelligent produc ...

and Elena Kolmanovskaya, editor-in-chief until 2012. Initially, it was a small company - employees at Yandex were friends of Arkadii Volash. Gradually Yandex became one of the leading Russian internet companies, and today, it includes several sub-companies, including Yandex.Taxi and news aggregator Yandex.News.

Social Networks

mail.ru

Alexei Krivenkov created Russia's first e-mail service, while working for an American IT company.

Mail.ru VK, known as Mail.ru Group until 12 October 2021, is a Russian technology company. It started in 1998 as the parent company of Mail.ru, an e-mail service and went on to become a major corporate figure in the Russian-speaking segment of the Int ...

, that is based on a free web mail system created by Alexei Krivenkov, became the main asset of Port.ru, a company he co-founded with his American partner, Eugene Goland. Mail.ru was able to become the top three most visited Russian websites. In 1999, they attracted the first investment in the history of the Russian Internet - one million dollars. One of the top Russian businessman,

Yuri Milner Yuri Borisovich (Bentsionovich) Milner (, ; born 11 November 1961) is a Soviet-born Israeli entrepreneur, investor, physicist and scientist. He is a co-founder and former chairperson of internet company Mail.Ru Group (later VK), and a founder ...

- billionaire, global investor, one of co-owners and chairman of Mail.ru Group during the period from 2001 to 2012. He pursued the degree in physics from Moscow State University. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he later studied to become an investment banker. In 1999, Yuri Milner was looking for a project in which to invest his first capital. After studying several industries, he came across a young and growing sector called Internet, that required minimal startup capital and had an enormous potential. Milner raised some investment money and started a company called Netbridge. Among its first acquisitions were entertainment website Fomenko.ru and Herman Klimenko's web directory List.ru. Later Netbridge merged with Port.ru and was renamed after its main asset - Mail.ru. The merger was, in fact, an acquisition - nobody from the old Port.ru team remained in the company. One of the new directions that appeared after merger was online gaming. Dmitry Grishin, the main integration ideologist, became Mail.ru's technical director at the age of 22, later company's CEO. He realized that people in that time in Russia weren't ready to pay for games. Therefore, he decided to make games free. People would play, have fun, and then service offered players to buy something that will make them feel better.

VKontakte

VK (VKontakte) is a social network, that was founded in 2006 by

Pavel Durov Pavel Valeryevich Durov (; born 10 October 1984) is a technology entrepreneur best known as the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Telegram (software), Telegram, a messaging platform launched in 2013. Durov was born in Russia, where h ...

with the help of Russian-Israeli investors Yitzchak Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev. Nikolai Durov, the elder brother of Pavel Durov and a winner of multiple awards in mathematics and coding, was the lead software engineer of VKontakte. In 2010 the main office of VK was placed in the Singer building in Saint-Petersburg. Soon after its launch, VK gained massive attention among Russian-speaking users. It was free, in contrast to odnoklasniki.ru. In addition to being a social network, it also functioned as a file sharing network: users had a possibility to upload films, music, pictures, etc. In 2014 Pavel Durov resigned and left Russia. On 16 September 2014, Mail.ru Group became the sole owner of VK.

Odnoklasniki.ru

Odnoklasniki.ru is a social network that was launched in 2006 and created by Albert Popkov. The concept was similar to the social network Classmates.com, a website that was used for classmates to chat. As a result of losing users to VK, Odnoklasniki.ru focused on a more mature and more provincial audience. In 2008, Popkov's former British employer sued him, claiming that he'd stolen the code for Odnoklassniki.ru. Eventually, Popkov won the trial, however he lost his position as CEO. After that, access to Odnoklasniki.ru became fee-based, which cost Odnoklasniki.ru some users. Ilya Shirokov, the new CEO of Odnoklasniki.ru, rebranded the network, and it became the second most popular social network in Russia. In order to stay relevant, the company added a streaming service that enabled users to stream their own life moments to their friends.

Mail.ru Group

Mail.ru Group is a Russian technology company. They own many companies, including VKontakte, Odnoklassniki.ru, YouDrive, Delivery Club, etc. In May 2017, Forbes put the Mail.ru Group in 97th place out of 100 most innovative companies in the world. In February 2017, Forbes estimated that the company's value was about 4 billion dollars. The company calls its communication development strategy "Communitainment" (communication + entertainment) and focuses on the development of communication and entertainment Internet services. All the main assets of the Mail.ru Group belong to four main lines of business: Social networks. Mail.ru Group owns three Russian social networks: VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and My World. Mail, portal and instant messaging. This direction includes Mail.ru Mail and the Mail.ru portal, which includes the main page of the site and the Auto Mail.ru, Cinema Mail.ru, Children Mail.ru, Health Mail.ru, Lady Mail.ru, News Mail.ru, Sport Mail.ru, Hi-Tech Mail.ru, Cars Mail.ru, Real Estate Mail.ru and Welcome Mail.ru as well as the instant messaging services ICQ and Agent Mail.ru. The gaming division of Mail.ru Games develops and publishes client and browser-based massively multiplayer online games, games for social networks and mobile devices, and the gaming portal Games Mail.ru. Search, e-commerce and more: Mail.ru Search, the Mail.ru Goods information and reference system, available information about goods and services, their cost in various online stores, the MAPS.ME service, which carries offline maps and navigation for mobile devices based on OpenStreetMap data, the mobile advertising service Yula and the ridesharing service BeepCar. Mail.ru Group is developing a direction of work in the field of Big data, which includes the creation of predictive mathematical models, conducting market research, consulting in the field of infrastructure development and methodology for working with big data. The Mail.ru brand also operates the Mail.ru platform for business, combining all B2B services of the company, a Q&A system, called Mail.ru answers and other Internet projects.

Messengers

Popular

ICQ ICQ was a cross-platform instant messaging (IM) and VoIP client founded in June 1996 by Yair Goldfinger, Sefi Vigiser, Amnon Amir, Arik Vardi, and Arik's father, Yossi Vardi. The name ICQ derives from the English phrase "I Seek You". Originally ...

messenger was in 2010 sold by AOL to Russia-based

After leaving VKontakte, Pavel Durov founded

Telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...

, a cross-platform messaging service. It includes general chats, secret chats, group chats, channels and chat-bots. The service is cloud-based, which means that all chats can be available on all devices, except for secret chats. The main emphasis was put on anonymity and encryption. Secret chats use end-to-end encryption, where only the sender and receiver have an encryption key. In contrary to general chats, messages are not decrypted on the server and message history is stored on the client devices. It is also possible to set a timer for secret chat, where all messages and files in the chat will be permanently deleted after a certain amount of time. In 2018,

Roskomnadzor The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as ''Roskomnadzor'' (RKN), is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. ...

required Pavel Durov to give access to the encryption keys, otherwise Telegram would be blocked in Russia. As a response, Pavel Durov stated that it is not possible to transfer encryption keys, as they were being created on a user's device every time that user connects with someone. On April 13, 2018, the Tagansky court of Moscow ruled in favor of Roskomnadzor, allowing them to block Telegram in Russia. As a response to the block, Pavel Durov created Digital Resistance. On April 30, 2018, more than 12 thousand people gathered on Moscow streets to support Telegram. Those events increased interest in Telegram among Russian users.

Russian bloggers

LiveJournal

With the emergence of Facebook, LiveJournal's popularity in the United States began to wane. In Russia, it continued to grow. LiveJournal became a platform for the formation of civil society. The first to unite were car drivers campaigning against the excessive use of flashing lights on the roads. The community received the name of "Blue Buckets". Civil activists on LiveJournal were soon followed by politicians. Aleksei Navalny's corruption investigations made his blog the most popular one on LiveJournal. The politician is still referred to as a blogger in pro-government media. According to Aleksei Navalny, "After 2005 or 2006, when mass media had been cleaned up and there remained only a couple of independent newspapers, the entire political debate moved to LiveJournal." In 2007, LiveJournal was acquired by SUP Media, co-owned by a Russian businessman named Aleksandr Mamut.

Spasibo, Eva

Yry Degtyaryov was one of the first content creators on YouTube. He made videos featuring his friend, Sam Nickel. Degtyaryov soon became a producer on RuTube, a Russian copycat of YouTube. But he didn't produce videos on that platform for long. After he found out that YouTube would start paying for videos through ads, he left RuTube. After that, he created Spasibo, Eva!(Thanks, Eva), a platform for aspiring Russian video bloggers. Among them, Ruslan Usachev, Danila Poperechny, Ilya Madysson,

Ilya Prusikin Ilya Vladimirovich Prusikin (, born 8 April 1985) is a Russian musician, singer, record producer, vlogger, video director and screenwriter. He is best known as the front person and founder of Saint Petersburg punk-pop-rave group Little Big. ...

and others. In 2013, hackers from the Anonymous group released internal Spasibo, Eva! emails, from which it became known that Spasibo, Eva! bloggers were paid by the Kremlin. This came as a shock for the majority of Spasibo, Eva! bloggers, as they didn't know where the money came from.

KlikKlak

After leaving Thanks, Eva!, Prusikin, Usachev and their friends founded KlikKlak, Russia's first independent community of video bloggers. Today, it's one of the biggest production companies on the Russian-language segment of YouTube. In the beginning, they shot their videos in the living room, and as the platform grew, the videos became more and more professional. Nowadays in Russia there are several production teams on YouTube similar to KlikKlak, for instance Chiken Curry and Big Russian Boss. The evolution of online platforms and streaming services makes it possible to monetize and promote web content without involvement by producers or the state. For example, Yuri Dud, journalist and blogger, is gaining around 7 million rubles just with integrated advertising.

Bloggers in politics

The first Russian politician to start a channel on YouTube was Aleksei Navalny, an opposition figure. In the summer of 2019, Moscow saw protests: first, against not allowing independent candidates to run in local elections, and then against police excesses against protesters. Russian YouTubers have been described as one of the driving forces of the Moscow protests. Danila Poperechny, Eldar Dzharakhov and Restaurateur came to St. Petersburg to take part in the rallies. Nikolai Sobolev, a vlogger, covered the protests and the criminal cases against demonstrators.

Governmental control

Safe Internet League

Konstantin Malofeyev Konstantin Valeryevich Malofeev (, born 3 July 1974) is a Russian media mogul and the chairman of the non-governmental and pro-monarchism, monarchist organisation called the Society for the Development of Russian Historical Education "Double-H ...

, founder of the " Safe Internet League", initiated the first restrictive Internet law in Russia. The so-called filtration law makes it mandatory to block websites containing harmful information, like pedophilia, propaganda of suicide, etc. As Malofeyev stated, the League's main task was to prepare a bill to protect children from negative content. The bill was supported by

Yelena Mizulina Yelena Borisovna Mizulina (; born December 9, 1954) is a Russian politician and lawyer. She served as a member of the State Duma between 1995 and 2003 and again between 2007 and 2015, and has been a member of the Federation Council since 2015. ...

, a Russian politician. Russian internet leaders, including Yandex, LiveJournal and VKontakte, spoke out against the Internet filtration law, seeing it as a censorship tool. The Russian Wikipedia went on a one-day strike. After that, the Russian State Duma has since passed more than 20 laws restricting the Internet.

Yarovaya law

Two bills declared by their authors as having an anti-terrorism focus were adopted in Russia in July 2016. As far as internet restriction is concerned, the law has two aspects: Internet traffic storage. The bill obliges telecom operators to store calls and messages of subscribers for a period determined by the Government of the Russian Federation (but no more than 6 months). Encryption tools. The bill establishes a ban on the use of non-certified means of encoding (encryption). For violation of this prohibition, the violator faces a fine of 3,000 to 5,000 rubles with confiscation of encryption. Also, the law obliges the organizers of the dissemination of information on the Internet to decode user messages. At the request of the FSB, companies will need to provide keys to encrypted traffic.

Sovereign Internet Act

The official law implies creation of independent network infrastructure, in order to maintain Internet connection in the case of foreign root servers becoming unavailable. According to an official statement, the Sovereign Internet Act will increase internet security in case of a cyber attack. Sovereign Internet Act is intended to create a possibility to isolate the Russian segment of the Internet, in addition it could be possible to switch off the Internet connection to certain areas of Russia. Among the public, the Sovereign Internet Act was considered to be an instrument of censorship and control over the Internet. On March 10, 2019, approximately 15 thousand people gathered on Sakharov Avenue to support free internet. The law was enacted on November 1, 2019.

References

{{Russia topics History of the Internet Internet in Russia