Bloggers share pictures [RUS] and video [RUS] of the unusually populous celebrations of Uraza Bairam (internationally known as Eid ul-Fitr [EN]), an important Muslim holiday. Paul Goble notes [EN] critical reactions in the press and a new wave of anti-Islamic sentiment provoked by the event.
Source: Global Voices Online » Russia
Photoblogger Igor Podgorny posts [RUS] apocalyptic pictures of the burnt fields, forests, and villages in the Volgograd region, that suffered from the second wave of wildfires.
Source: Global Voices Online » Russia
Blogger fritzmorgen posts[RUS] pictures of Anastasia Denisenko, a regional leader of “Molodaya Gvardia”, Russian pro-Kremlin youth movement. The movement officially agitates against alcoholism and drug abuse, although the unofficial pictures depict quite the opposite. The blogger also supplies the posters of the various club parties sponsored by the movement.
Source: Global Voices Online » Russia
This summer's wildfires made it possible to learn a lot about the role that the Russian Internet community plays in the society. We have seen that the social media activists were able not only to provide independent sources of information [ENG] but also to cooperate with each other [ENG]. There is one additional dimension, however.
Despite the initial, politically neutral position, bloggers found themselves in a situation where they had to, unwillingly, participate in a political clash. It’s not only that bloggers were critical of the poor governmental response to the disaster. The online community had a few direct clashes with the pro-government forces, primarily activists and supporters of the Russian ruling party Edinaya Rossiya [ENG] (United Russia). The relationship between the blogger community and the pro-government forces had a high level of hostility.
One of the first episodes of the virtual struggle between bloggers and United Russia supporters took place when bloggers caught [EN] United Russia forging photos, and Ruslan Gattarov, a senator and head of the ruling party’s youth wing Molodaya Gvardiya (The Young Guard), staging pictures of himself putting out fires. Gattarov later explained [RUS] that he had to upload fake photos in order to put some content on the site and had no time to deliver the real photos. He wrote [RUS] that bloggers ”could only stare at pictures and write nasty things” instead of putting out fires the way United Russia did. On his Twitter account, the senator was [RUS] even less diplomatic:
Ruslan Gattarov's tweet.
Some time after the scandal, United Russia announced [RUS] that Gattarov would be replaced as the leader of Molodaya Gvardiya. Although the official version said it was a planned replacement, a popular belief was that the Kremlin had been dissatisfied both with Gattarov's inadequate wildfires response and his ignorant public declarations. Piligrim-67, a blogger who helped to raise the issue, said [RUS] in an interview to a local media outlet that “effective and fast justice is possible only on the Internet.”
Gattarov also heads the United Russia's blogosphere council that was created in June 2010 and should improve the online image of United Russia as well as manage the network of its online supporters. The activities of the council had been investigated [RUS] by blogger spburger-senior.
Another major incident was a “black PR” attack against Yelizaveta Glinka (aka LJ user doctor-liza), a doctor and one of the leaders of the volunteer movement. The official website of United Russia published [RUS] an offensive article that accused Glinka of having political ties with the Spravedlivaya Rossiya [ENG] (A Just Russia) party. The article had a photoshopped image of Glinka with a zipped mouth. All the volunteers were accused by the United Russia ”experts” of having political connections to “A Just Russia.” The reason for the United Russia media outburst was that after a consultation [RUS] with her readers, Glinka refused to give an interview to the party website reporters.
A photoshopped image of Yelizaveta Glinka, made by United Russia
Glinka's readers were extremely against any kind of cooperation with the ruling party. “Do you understand what they need this information for? They want […] say that it was done by them”, wrote [RUS] jestianka.
Blogger g_zharkov wrote [RUS]:
Лиза, не свяывайтесь после того как сенатор Гаттаров потушил поддожженной самим собой дерево, а потом ушел на выходные - любое общение с ними позор для любого реального добровольца как мне вчера сказали молодые и реально помогающие ребята из Владимирской глубинки “давайте жить так, как будто их и вправду нет”
Glinka wrote [RUS] that United Russia would now try to close her LiveJournal account and would keep harassing her.
The offensive article on the United Russia website has only made bloggers angrier. LJ user avmalgin wrote [RUS]:
Это самая настоящая травля, по-другому назвать нельзя. Причем травля человека, который действительно занимается делом. Если вспомнить, что еще не так давно доктору Лизе ломали ее ЖЖ, который был основным инструментом в ее подвижнической деятельности, складывается вполне ясная картина.Все уже знают, как бесстыдно и неуклюже “партия власти” пытается пиариться на пожарах. […] Прикоснуться к “Единой Росии” - значит запачкаться. Но беда в том, что они пытаются испачкать тех, кто с ними не желает иметь дело.
Another clash took place between the Ushahidi-based project Help Map [ENG] (Russian-fires.ru), an independent, non-political platform, and the website of United Russia supporters, called Storonniki (“Supporters”). The banner of Help Map was placed misleadingly under the information about Storonniki's own coordination center, and the organization ignored Help Map's requests to re-position the banner.
Screenshot of the misleading banner placement
On August 21, Igor Cherski, another leader of the volunteer movement, drew attention to the inappropriate banner. Cherski wrote [RUS] on his blog:
Ваш баннер и ссылка на “Карту помощи” появились вот здесь: http://www.storonniki.info/
Вы в курсе происходящего? Вас использовали или теперь вы работаете вместе со сторонниками ЕР? Просто интересно, ничего личного.
The question raised by Cherski caused another wave of of anger among bloggers. LJ user eresiru called it [RUS] an ideological mistake that would lead to total disappointment of the supporters of Help Map. Convincing people that Help Map had nothing to do with United Russia wasn’t an easy task. The site already had a disclaimer that the project had no affiliation with any political group, but now the creators had to add an explanation [RUS] on the top of the page that they were not cooperating with any politicians, and United Russia in particular, since it acted immorally throughout the disaster. Eventually, the banner was removed from Storonniki website, and Cherski acknowledged [RUS] that Help Map had nothing to do with the Russian ruling party.
Later, however, i_cherski dedicated a special post to the clarification of his position in regard to United Russia. He emphasized that the behavior of United Russia had been nothing to be proud of, but suggested that the online community should not automatically disregard any cooperation with United Russia activists. Some bloggers opposed Cherski’s idea:
“The best thing we can do is ignore them,” wrote [RUS] eckero.
“Everything they touch turns into farce. They spend money on PR without any real effect,” radvi_sasha responded [RUS].
Blogger kaktuso concluded that there was no sense in helping even the reasonable members of the party since it would do nothing but promote United Russia.
Unfortunately, the clashes weren't limited to online space only. On August 28, doctor-liza published a post about a visit of an unknown male, who entered through the open door and threatened her. She wrote [RUS]:
Он встал около двери нашей кухни - со сложенными за спиной руками.
С акцентом он спросил
- Это ты? “Справедливая помощь?”
- Я. Руки из - за спины выньте.
- Ты, б…дь, чего хочешь?
- Что бы Вы ушли.
- Уйдешь отсюда ты. Сука. Б…ь. Через тридцать дней. Б…ь.Насовсем.
И так несколько раз.
Then the man promised to return and left. Glinka asked volunteers to forgive her for getting them involved in a dangerous situation, asked them to stop visiting her and promised to increase security measures. Still, it is unclear if this episode is connected with the earlier conflict with United Russia.
Two “imagined communities” in Russia: TV audience and online audience
The bloggers' community has demonstrated not only the feeling of dissatisfaction, but a high degree of hostility towards the government and United Russia. Opposition to the government was a common denominator for the majority of online activists, despite the fact that volunteers’ platforms had no political or oppositional background.
The critical attitude of the blogosphere differed significantly from the perception of the wildfire events by the majority of Russians. A poll by Levada Center showed [RUS] that most Russians thought that the government's response had been good, while the support ratings of the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev (73%) and prime minister Vladimir Putin (78%) had even slightly improved. 27 percent of the respondents said their opinions about the state’s leadership had improved, 57 percent said that it had remained unchanged and only 12 percent said that it had become worse. The most popular answer about the cause of the wildfires (39 percent) was that they were a natural phenomenon caused by extreme weather, and that no one could be held responsible for it.
Aleksey Grazhdankin, deputy director of Levada Center, explained [RUS] that the numbers depended on how the information of the wildfires had been presented to the public by the mainstream media (MSM). TV-watchers and bloggers had completely different sets of information. The blogosphere was full of firsthand information about the scale of the disaster, while the MSM avoided dramatization and focused more on the government’s response than on the disaster itself or its victims.
In this case we can see that the Internet actually triggers offline activity (and is not making people more passive, as it is sometimes argued), because it provides an independent picture of reality, shows that action is required and suggests ways of facilitating this action. ”Enlightened” bloggers are relatively few in Russia (according to various estimates, between 20,000 and 50,000 people), and are completely outnumbered by the majority who uses the MSM as a major source of information, which often has a pro-government slant.
Benedict Anderson, a renowned historian, approached the media as a mechanism of formation of social groups with a common identity, which he called “imagined communities” [ENG].
The wildfires have shown that there are two very different “imagined communities” in Russia: TV viewers and social media users. They have different, and often quite opposite, attitudes, which affect how they act. The consumption of information online is deeply interrelated with social interaction, and, due to this and other factors, the Internet community is a much stronger, more effective and united, “imagined community.”
If in the previous article we argued [ENG] that the unaccountability of the government had triggered online cooperation, in this case we see that the degree of cooperation depends on the information source. To be provoked by the state’s unaccountability, people should first be informed that the government is unaccountable. This is what has been done by the Russian social media, whose approach is so different from MSM.
The divide between the two communities is deepening, although the TV community is still the decisive majority. The balance between the passive majority and the active minority presents an electoral dilemma: which political strategy should the Russian leaders choose to address both “imagined communities”?
In his recent article, Alexey Sidorenko suggests [RUS] three scenarios for development of the Russian Internet – liberalization, preservation of the current ambivalent status quo, and a significant increase of censorship and filtering. I would like to add the fourth scenario, a futuristic one, that would suggest the aforementioned divide to take place and to form a dual state – the “virtual” one, made up of citizens, and the “real” one, made up of the TV spectators. We may assume, however, that in this case the authorities will do anything to make Internet as close as possible to the TV model [ENG].
Source: Global Voices Online » Russia
Buckwheat porridge, photo by Laitr Keiows
The heatwave and the subsequent drought in Russia's central regions haven't only resulted in wildfires [EN] and increased death rates due to smog [EN] in Moscow, but also in the government's decision to ban grain exports [EN]. The latter caused several bursts of food panic, the most important of which became known as the “buckwheat panic.”
Buckwheat porridge is considered a unique Russian dish. In 2008, Russia produced [EN] almost half of all the world's buckwheat, while 21 percent of Russians prefers it to any other cereals.
Food prices in Russia have been constantly rising throughout 2010, although none of the previous rises had caused such a powerful media impact. The current online ‘panic' started at the end of August (the first messages related to the topic can be dated back to August 20-22).
Pulse of the Blogosphere: ‘buckwheat,' ‘panic,' ‘deficit' (a graph by Yandex)
LJ user sova-sp wrote:
…гречка за 76 рублей
–дикий скачок цен за последние 2 недели
…что никого не волнует как будут выживать пенсионеры и люди в регионах
Similar thoughts can be found expressed here, here, and here.
On August 23, the article “Farewell to Porridge” was published in the oppositional magazine “The New Times.” It analyzed the growing buckwheat prices and concluded that there was not enough buckwheat in the country. Despite the emerging number of worried posts in the blogosphere, the newspaper had been criticized for disseminating online panic. Evgeniya Albats, executive editor of the magazine, later argued that unlike in the case of grain, the government doesn’t have a strategic reserve for buckwheat, and that the topic should have been exposed by TV channels, and not just by her publication.
Some bloggers have been distributing a Greenpeace video [RUS] with the evidence of the loss of major grain crops in Voronezh region and a declaration that the lost crops were due to the global climate change that can't be ignored.
Other bloggers, however, weren’t terrified by the unusual price escalation. Popular blogger drugoi wrote [RUS]:
ЧуднАя у нас страна, все-таки. То соль пропадала, помню. Теперь вот какие-то проблемы с гречкой, говорят. Зашел сейчас в ближайший от меня магазин. Цену на гречку подняли неделю назад. На тридцать рублей, как сказала кассирша. Потому что поднялась оптовая цена. Гречку привозят со склада где-то в Подмосковье. Управляющий говорит, что склад его оптовика этой гречкой забит под завязку. Хоть завались этой гречкой. Хоть выкладывай этой гречкой дорогу до Владивостока. Но пошла волна и на этом оптовом складе тоже подняли цены. Почему, зачем — никто не понимает. А вы понимаете?
Another blogger wrote [RUS]:
Сейчас был в магазине - продавщицу доставали вопросами о гречке: что случилось, когда будет и как блять жить дальше. Причем вопросы задавали не бедные пенсионеры, а люди среднего возраста и вполне состоявшегося вида. Ну вот нет гречки, и что? Все умрут нахер? Рис, картошка, макароны, горох и прочее в горло не полезут?
A pro-Kremlin blogger pro-kurator summarized [RUS] the skeptical blog posts against the panic:
Кстати, совершенно достоверный факт - в одной из торговых сетей […] продавцам рекомендовали делать озабоченное лицо и рассказывать о возможных (”это мое личное мнение”) проблемах с поставками. Потому что испуганный покупатель сметает всё. Называется “искусственно созданный ажиотажный спрос” - как с солью. Когда народ покупал её мешками, а потом сидел и думал - “И нахрена я купил 52 кг соли? Что, 100 рублей не нашел бы, если бы подорожала? Теперь за 10 лет не съесть!”.
Понятно, что с урожаем-2010, мягко скажем, проблемы - но “продовольственная паника” их только усугубляет. Давая поставщикам и торговым сетям прекрасный повод задирать цены - вызывая новую волну истерики ”видите, дорожает!”. Кстати, если статистика не врет - продажи круп, макаронов и муки за последнюю неделю (!) выросли впятеро.
No doubt there are, to put it mildly, problems with the harvest of 2010 – but the “food panic” is only making them worse. It gives the reason to suppliers and chain stores to raise prices, causing the new wave of panic – “Look, it’s getting more expensive!” By the way, if the statistics doesn’t lie, the sales of cereals, spaghetti and wheat have grown 5 times in the past week!
Blogger lindenss [RUS] commented:
мне всегда интересно в такие вот периоды всеобщей паники - а что, реально все эти люди, которые с вытаращенными глазами скупают гречку пакетами, ее едят регулярно в промышленных количествах?)
у нас единственный пакет гречки живет… эээ.. ну больше года точно)
Some bloggers mocked [RUS] the inadequacy of the Russian political life and this local crisis in the form of Haiku [EN]:
Путин спокоен:
“Все под контролем”
Народ раскупает гречкуТВ-пропаганда
Толкает фуфло
Народ раскупает гречку
TV-propaganda
Pushing bullshit
People are sweeping away buckwheat
Some bloggers, however, argued that it was the blogosphere that had triggered the panic (although such a point of view can hardly be valid):
Может вы не в курсе, но сейчас все бабульки у подъездов ссылаются в разговоре на Интернет.
- Слышали, послезавтра будет дождь. Интернет обещал.Завтра ждите рейдов по магазинам-будут сметать с прилавков все, чем там полагается перед войной запасаться: солью, мукой, спичками. Ну и гречу, конечно, скупят. Ту, которую еще не скупили. Ибо Интернет сказал: немножко паники.
Tomorrow expect raids on the shops - people will be sweeping away everything that one must store up on before the war: salt, wheat, matches. And of course, they'll sweep away the buckwheat. The buckwheat that hadn't been bought already. Because the Internet said: a little bit of panic, please.
Later, it was widely recognized that the main beneficiaries of the “buckwheat panic” were wholesale grain suppliers who were happy to sell cheap buckwheat for “astronomic” prices.
The story of the “buckwheat panic” illustrates the ability of bloggers to critically analyze the information and approach even quite disturbing topics from a distance. The general understanding of the problem and common sense has prevented the dissemination of panic any further. The blogosphere has once again presented an example of the intelligent media, where false information is being refuted quickly, while trustworthy information, even if it's unpleasant for the authorities, is viable.
Source: Global Voices Online » Russia
The first anniversary of the Beslan tragedy, 2005. Photo by Natasha Mozgovaya
Agunda Vataeva (LJ user agunya) was a 13-year-old girl about to begin her ninth-grade studies on Sept. 1, 2004, the day when she, her mother and more than 1,100 others were taken hostage at School #1 in the North Ossetian town of Beslan. She survived the three-day siege. Her mother, a teacher, didn't. Of the 334 hostages who lost their lives six years ago, 186 were children.
Agunda is a 19-year-old college student now. In the past three days, she has posted three installments of her recollections (RUS) of Sept. 1-3, 2004, on her LiveJournal and Radio Echo of Moscow blogs.
She writes this in the introduction to her first post:
While at the hospital, right after I got a notebook [computer], I began writing down what I remembered of those three days that I spent as a hostage. Six years later, I'd like to publish the notes I was writing then, [when the memories were still fresh]. […]
On the Echo of Moscow blog, this Sept. 1 entry has been viewed 7,554 times and has generated 55 comments so far.
Agunda begins her account with the description of a festive yet ordinary morning, warm and very sunny, her walk to school with her mother, the final preparations for the welcoming of the new school year, and her casual chat with friends - which was suddenly interrupted by shooting:
[…] I turned around and saw three boys running towards the exit, and behind them a man in fatigues and with a thick black beard. He was running after the boys and shooting in the air. I thought: “Someone is making a bad joke, must be a prank or perhaps yet another drill.” These thoughts vanished as soon as the shooting started from all sides and they started pushing us towards the boiler house. We were all huddled together. Trampled flowers, shoes and bags were strewn on the asphalt. […]
Agunda and a couple of her close friends found themselves trapped in the school gym, together with hundreds of other hostages:
[…] People were panicking, we were hysterical. To quiet us down, They got one man up and threatened to kill him if we didn't fall silent. We were trying, but the fear and the panic prevailed. A gunshot was heard. They killed him… this is when the silence set in, dead silence, literally. Only the children's crying and screaming interrupted it. […]
Soon enough Agunda's mother was allowed to join her daughter:
[…] We immediately started asking her what would happen, whether they would let us go or not. […] Mama was talking very calmly, saying that everything would be fine, that we would be rescued. But as I looked at her, I knew that even Mama didn't know how it would all end, she was just calming us down, as her students, as kids. Kids - we were nothing but the scared kids then. […] In a situation like that, even the most mature ADULTS were turning into cranky kids. […]
Some more details from Day 1 of the siege:
[…] A gunman walked by, then stopped abruptly, […] looked at Madina [Agunda's friend] and got very angry. He threw some jacket to her with these words: “Cover your shame!” She had bare knees, and, frightened, she covered herself right away. I felt a little bit better after this. “At least, they aren't going to rape us,” I thought.
[…]
Time went by very slowly. It was hot, terribly hot. We took off all the clothes we could take off without looking indecent. There was little space, we sat on a bench. […]
[…]
[…] It was around 8 PM when it started raining […]. We sat by the broken windows and were catching raindrops with our mouths - this is how thirsty we were. Mama kept covering me and the girls with her jacket, but I kept getting out to get some rain. I felt so good - I think it's the best memory from that hell. […]
Closer to lunchtime, by the way, They tried setting up a TV in the gym (to entertain the hostages with newscasts, obviously), but [it didn't work]. They told us that, according to the TV reports, there were 354 hostages. We felt […] outraged. […]
[…]
Throughout the night, we took turns sleeping in couples for an hour. While Madina and I sat on the bench, Mama and Zarina slept on the floor. An hour passed, and we'd switch. […]
In the Sept. 2 entry (9,626 views, 92 comments on the Echo of Moscow blog), Agunda writes, among other things, about the hostage-takers' phone conversations, their demands (which included withdrawal of the Russian troops from the neighboring Chechnya and recognition of its independence), the visit of Ruslan Aushev, ex-president of the neighboring Ingushetia, and the resulting release of “11 nursing women and all 15 baby children” - an event that revived Agunda's hopes.
The account of Day 3 of the siege was the hardest for Agunda to write about - and is the hardest one to read:
[…] It was the day I remember best, and for too long these memories were causing me pain, keeping me from writing them down. […]
As of now, this Sept. 3 entry has been viewed 16,185 times and has 178 comments on the Echo of Moscow blog (and these numbers continue to grow).
Agunda describes her own and other hostages' exhaustion, thirst and despair:
[…] All this time, Zarina's cousin, a first-grader, was with her, and she was very worried about him. On the third day, he was extremely weak and kept asking for water. Somewhere, she got some urine, in some broken cheap box, and she was giving it to him in small portions, wiping his and her own face with it. I couldn't overcome my squeamishness, or perhaps my thirst wasn't bad enough to drink this. […]
Around 1 PM, Agunda writes, the hostage-takers announced that the Russian troops would withdraw from Chechnya and, if that information were true, they would start releasing the hostages soon:
[…] This was when I felt like crying for the first time in these three days, because there was some hope now that we would get out of there. And then… I just lost consciousness, and when I came to, the roof was burning over me, everything was falling, people were lying all around. The first thing I saw when I got up was a burning and burnt corpse of one of the terrorists, […]. They started yelling that the ones who were alive should get up and get out of the gym into the hallway. I don't know why, but Mama and I got up and walked off. […] By the door, I saw something that I still think about when I think about the terrorist act… I saw the body of a little, skinny girl, and when I looked above her neck, I realized that I just didn't see the upper part of her skull […]. It was the most horrifying moment, and it was then, I guess, that I realized that this was all happening for real. […]
The next few minutes brought another explosion, and more carnage and horror. Agunda was severely injured, but she was still capable of moving. Her mother wasn't:
[…] Mama was lying nearby. “My leg,” she said. “Leave.” I'll never be able to forgive myself for having obeyed her, for turning around and leaving. I don't know what it was. Where this betrayal came from.
I crawled to the broken window on all fours. There were some stoves by the window, and I reached the window sill. On one of these stoves lay two corpses of undressed, emaciated boys. They looked like brothers. Their eyes… […]
I was one movement away from the street when my leg slipped into some hole. I could barely feel the leg at that point, couldn't find it, kept dragging it, but nothing came out of it. Our local militia and the soldiers were already waiting for me down below. They were yelling to me: “Come on, the golden one, come on, little sun!” But I couldn't. This feeling of weakness and hopelessness made me cry. For the first time in three days I was crying. But then I somehow pulled myself together and managed to free the leg. […]
Agunda goes on writing about how she was taken to the hospital, how she learned about her mother's death. She writes about her friends and teachers who did not survive. She writes about living with the pain:
[…] People are still dying because of the consequences of the terrorist act. People are still reliving these events over and over again. I haven't told you even half of it, I guess. Memory is an amazing thing: one tries to forget everything that's bad, horrible, painful.
[…] I'm telling you my story. All that happened, happened in my dear school, with the people I love, and I think I have the right to tell you about my pain. What I used to call life back then was taken away from me. […]
The people of Beslan are trying to let the truth be known. We aren't too good at it. The investigation has been going on for six years already, but it hasn't moved a bit. All the questions that we had then, remain today. […]
Many bloggers have linked to and quoted from Agunda's posts in the past few days. Many people have written to let her know that they remember what happened six years ago and that they feel her pain and the pain of other survivors. According to some bloggers (RUS), however, neither President Dmitry Medvedev, nor PM Vladimir Putin, has issued any statements regarding the sixth anniversary of the Beslan tragedy. And on Sept. 1, one of Agunda's readers left this short comment (RUS) on her Echo of Moscow blog:
Will Putin's daughters read this?
The first anniversary of the Beslan tragedy, 2005. Photo by Natasha Mozgovaya
More of Natasha Mozgovaya's 2005 photos from Beslan are here; her Russian-language LJ blog is here.
Earlier GV posts on Beslan are here.
Source: Global Voices Online » Russia
Active campaign raised by the bloggers outraged by a brutal policemen who assaulted a protester [RUS] led to the results. First, bloggers found out policeman's identity, then the criminal case had been started. Finally the policeman came by himself to the Prosecutor's office to witness on the case, corrupcia.net reported [RUS].
Source: Global Voices Online » Russia
Two more posts from Beslan - here and here (RUS) - by Marina Litvinovich (LJ user abstract2001): “Six years without the children… Six years without the truth…”
Source: Global Voices Online » Russia
Blogger ibigdan mentions [RUS] at least 4 public law violations conducted by Vladimir Putin within 2 months, including his famous putting out the fire while co-piloting a plane [EN], and Lada Kalina [EN] trip.
Source: Global Voices Online » Russia
Marina Litvinovich (LJ user abstract2001) reports (RUS) from Beslan on the sixth anniversary of the 2004 school hostage crisis, posting photos of the school building back in 2004 and now, and of the commemoration held there in the evening of Sept. 1. “The town is also empty,” she writes. “School year doesn't start until Sept. 6.”
Source: Global Voices Online » Russia
Official Russia is not about Kremlin or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Official Russia is about people. This website aggregates dozens of independent sources of information about life in Russia, such as weblogs, photo-galleries, communities, research and analysis companies.
