Great follow up from The Insider on recent SovFed statements about more aggressive measures to restrict VPNs that enable circumventing censorship in Russia (again illustrating SovFed is not the place where to expect tech expertise...).
Worth translating if you're interested in the topic of VPNs in Russia.
Klimarev bursting some bubbles on Russia's ability to fully disconnect from the global internet:
"Им (власти) нужен будет какой-то интернет всё-таки, иначе как нефтью торговать? Они нефтью в российском интернете, что ли, будут торговать? [...] Еще нужно покупать что-то на том же AliExpress."
Fully agree with Klimarev that preventing Russians from using VPNs to access restricted resources (e.g. by limiting search results or protocol-based blocking) is impossible. At the same time, Russia certainly can be successful in making it much harder for most ordinary citizens.
"The Identity Politics of Heritage.
Decommunization, Decolonization, and Derussification of Kyiv Monuments after Russia’s Full Scale Invasion of Ukraine" by Olena Betlii (2022).
"Russia’s war against Ukraine has shown not only how the Kremlin has weaponized history, but also how the victim can fight back by breaking historical ties with the aggressor. Since March 2022, Ukraine has been developing new identity politics of heritage. The article focuses on decisions made by the Kyiv City Council, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, and the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory regarding material objects associated with Russian or Soviet heritage. It also shows how Kyiv opinionmakers and experts have reacted to changes that will eventually result in the reshaping of the city’s memory landscape".
@Wilshire I cannot think of a time in recent history when we have gotten more bang for our military buck than supporting #Ukraine against #Russia .
Not only are we doing the right thing by helping a democratic nation fight an invasion by an expansionist regime, but this aid has helped weaken one of our two main adversaries, and serves as a warning to China.
This is truly one of those win/win situations where the only debate should be the degree of military aid, not whether we support Ukraine.
Interesting new paper from Philipp Dietrich on the development of Russia's VK social media platform into a 'super app' to increase state surveillance and the dissemination of propaganda.
I had the pleasure of learning about this research when visiting DGAP earlier this year, glad to now see it published.
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. You are a young Russian woman living in the late 19th century, where a successful romance seems quite impossible for the obliviously wealthy; you try to break the mold but the mold wins. 4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
Please stop referring to the Chinese and Russian 'models' of internet control.
How Russia censors today is the complete opposite of what the 'Russian model' referred to when the idea of 'models' was first proposed (and China hasn't exactly been static either...)
I'm writing about Internet bills proposed by the Russian State Duma that either did not go anywhere (e.g. Milonov's 2017 social-media-by-passport proposal) or only much later or in heavily redacted form (such as the 2020 social media law). Which other bills should I include?
I'm trying to get a sense of the overall dynamics of proposals being floated at various times since 2012. Vague leads or hunches welcome!
The iPhone of Meduza's Galina Timchenko was infected with Pegasus spyware in February 2023. The ability of Russian independent journalists to continue their work in exile is under tremendous pressure (Meduza has been operating from Riga since 2014). Yet more evidence how working from within the EU does not necessarily shield them from risk
The idea of returning Dzerzhinsky to Lubyanka Sqaure was floated on various occassion (and for various purposes). In 2021, the city of Moscow even organised an online vote for residents to decide whose statue should be placed on the square in front of the FSB building: returning the toppled Dzerzhinsky, or erecting a statue of Aleksandr Nevsky instead. But the vote was cancelled mid-way.
The political usage of the memory of Nevsky, by the way, is not without its issues either as it has been used by a tandem of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to promote a conservative idea of a 'Russian world' (see also the chapter linked here)
Attempts to return Dzerzhinsky into the public domain fit into a larger trend of normalising - or even glorifying - state repression. Putin's long-standing promotion of Stolypin carries similar connotations (here's Stolypin spotted by FBK on Putin's yacht in one of their most recent investigations).
Favoured by Putin himself, Stolypin got his statue in Moscow already in 2012 (though the statue was not placed on Lubyanka square to fill the empty spot where the toppled Dzerzhinsky used to stand, as Nikita Mikhalkov had proposed as early as 2001 - as I outline in the chapter linked below).
Today in Labor History September 9, 1828: Leo Tolstoy, Russian author and playwright was born. He is most famous for novels like Anna Karina, and War and Peace. He chose the name for the latter after reading French anarchist Proudhon’s publication called War and Peace. Tolstoy also wrote many short stories, an autobiography and many works of nonfiction. After witnessing a public execution in 1857, he wrote: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere." In the 1870s, he experienced a profound spiritual awakening, which led him to become a Christian anarchist and pacifist, and which he wrote about in his non-fiction work Confession (1882). He also wrote about nonviolent resistance in The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), which influenced Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Wittgenstein. He was repeatedly nominated for Nobel prizes in both literature and peace.
Britain’s second-biggest city effectively declared itself bankrupt on Tuesday, shutting down all nonessential spending after being issued with equal pay claims totaling up to £760 million ($956 million)....
Interesting think piece by Yakov Feygin on Prigozhin's Concord that illustrates the usefulness of a political economy perspective on Russia - even if only to expose and question prevalent assumptions
Looking at internet censorship in Russia, I've noticed how often it still gets ignored that there even is an economic side to it. This is both silly (these are large businesses after all) and analytically problematic as it disregards the importance of neoliberalism.
This is not to say that the typical drivers and logics of authoritarian states do not apply. But they co-exist and need to grapple with the realities of contemporary globalised business and finance and the fact that often, you actually do need a business case for it to work
"We've used 5% of our defense budget to arm Ukraine. And with it, they've destroyed 50% of Putin's army." - Ad targeted to Republicans to support Ukraine (streamable.com)
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Britain's second-largest city effectively declares itself bankrupt amid $950 million equal pay claims | CNN Business (www.cnn.com)
Britain’s second-biggest city effectively declared itself bankrupt on Tuesday, shutting down all nonessential spending after being issued with equal pay claims totaling up to £760 million ($956 million)....