popular mainstream newspapers Izvestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda, and Moskovsky Komsomolets combined. 9 The Russian-language blogosphere—which currently makes up 3 percent of the world’s 3.1 million blogs—grows by more than 7,000 new blogs per day. 10
There are currently more Russian-language blogs than there are French, German, or
Portuguese, and only marginally fewer than Spanish, 11 which is spoken by a larger percentage of the world population. 12
This shift has been fueled as much by the growing state control over the traditional
mass media as it has been by the draw of what the new online environment has to
offer. Well-known journalists, commentators, and political figures have all turned
to the RUNET as the off-line environment suffers through more severe restrictions and
sanctions. Across the CIS, especially in the increasingly authoritarian countries of
Uzbekistan, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, the RUNET has become the last and only refuge
of public debate. Given its rapid ascent to the popular mainstream, it is paradoxical—
and certainly a puzzle—that RUNET has elided filtering controls of the kind imposed
by China on its Internet in all but a few countries. In the next section, we explore
why that is the case.
Next-Generation Information Controls in the CIS
Although RUNET is a wild hive of buzzing online activity, it is not completely unregulated. Since its emergence in the early 1990s, RUNET has been subject to a variety of
controls. Some controls have been commercial in motivation and represent crude
attempts to use formal authority to create what amounts to a monopoly over secure
communications and as means to seek rents. 13 This form of control has not been
unique to RUNET and has extended to every other facet of post-Soviet life, from car
registration through to the supply of gasoline, as an aspect of the great scramble to
prihvatizatsia public assets that occurred during the early to mid 1990s. 14 Other controls have emerged from a legal system inherited from the Soviet era, which criminalized activities without necessarily seeking prosecution, except selectively. These forms
of control effectively form the rules of the game for all informal networks. Their emergence in the virtual online world of the RUNET is transparent and natural.
But during the late 1990s, and especially following the color revolutions that swept
through the CIS region, states began to think seriously about the security implications
of RUNET, and in particular its potential to enable mobilization of mass social unrest.
The first attempts at formally controlling cyberspace were legal, beginning with legislation enabling surveillance (SORM-II), 15 and later in 2001 with the publication of
Russia’s Doctrine of Information Security. While the doctrine addressed mass media and
did not focus on RUNET specifically, it declared the information sphere to be a vital
national asset that required state protection and policing. The doctrine used strong language to describe the state’s right to guide the development of this space, as well as its
responsibility to ensure that information space respects ‘‘the stability of the constitu20
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski
There are currently more Russian-language blogs than there are French, German, or
Portuguese, and only marginally fewer than Spanish, 11 which is spoken by a larger percentage of the world population. 12
This shift has been fueled as much by the growing state control over the traditional
mass media as it has been by the draw of what the new online environment has to
offer. Well-known journalists, commentators, and political figures have all turned
to the RUNET as the off-line environment suffers through more severe restrictions and
sanctions. Across the CIS, especially in the increasingly authoritarian countries of
Uzbekistan, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, the RUNET has become the last and only refuge
of public debate. Given its rapid ascent to the popular mainstream, it is paradoxical—
and certainly a puzzle—that RUNET has elided filtering controls of the kind imposed
by China on its Internet in all but a few countries. In the next section, we explore
why that is the case.
Next-Generation Information Controls in the CIS
Although RUNET is a wild hive of buzzing online activity, it is not completely unregulated. Since its emergence in the early 1990s, RUNET has been subject to a variety of
controls. Some controls have been commercial in motivation and represent crude
attempts to use formal authority to create what amounts to a monopoly over secure
communications and as means to seek rents. 13 This form of control has not been
unique to RUNET and has extended to every other facet of post-Soviet life, from car
registration through to the supply of gasoline, as an aspect of the great scramble to
prihvatizatsia public assets that occurred during the early to mid 1990s. 14 Other controls have emerged from a legal system inherited from the Soviet era, which criminalized activities without necessarily seeking prosecution, except selectively. These forms
of control effectively form the rules of the game for all informal networks. Their emergence in the virtual online world of the RUNET is transparent and natural.
But during the late 1990s, and especially following the color revolutions that swept
through the CIS region, states began to think seriously about the security implications
of RUNET, and in particular its potential to enable mobilization of mass social unrest.
The first attempts at formally controlling cyberspace were legal, beginning with legislation enabling surveillance (SORM-II), 15 and later in 2001 with the publication of
Russia’s Doctrine of Information Security. While the doctrine addressed mass media and
did not focus on RUNET specifically, it declared the information sphere to be a vital
national asset that required state protection and policing. The doctrine used strong language to describe the state’s right to guide the development of this space, as well as its
responsibility to ensure that information space respects ‘‘the stability of the constitu20
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski