Latest posts by Kevin Rothrock from December, 2012
This December, Russia's Kids Aren't Alright
As billions of people across the world awoke today to open gifts and be with their families, three of Russian Duma Deputy Sergei Zhelezniak's four daughters rolled out of bed to find that intimate photographs from their social network accounts had been published in a muckraking attack on their father. Navalny's decision to target Zhelezniak's children has split the RuNet into camps of supporters and critics.
Prank Reveals the Depths of Anti-American Propaganda in the Russian Media
Anonymity affords ordinarily timid individuals the courage and opportunity to behave dishonestly. That, anyway, is the story we typically hear, especially in the context of the Internet. As Oleg Kashin recently pointed out in his column [ru] at openspace.ru, however, it takes two to make a successful prank (the prankster and the sucker)—a...
On Putin's Address to the Federal Assembly
RuNet Echo contributor Donna Welles compiles [en] netizen reactions to President Putin's Address to the Federal Assembly (ru, en), highlighting which passages best resonated with bloggers and how they interpreted and understood his latest initiatives.
Russian Documentary Filmmakers Abandon YouTube After Police Investigation
On December 12, filmmakers halted the online publication of one of Russia's most curious documentary efforts: "Srok" ("The Term"), a video project hosted on YouTube and LiveJournal, chronicling and capturing the events of the opposition movement. The project's suspension came after federal investigators searched the home of one of its directors.
Interview with Maksim Kononenko: Russian Non-Oppositionist Blogging
Kononenko is widely considered to be one of the RuNet’s pioneers, and has worked as a publicist, a columnist, a programmer, and a television host, among other things. He is a self-described "liberal," though his political positions place him squarely outside the Russian opposition.
Remembering the Night the Russian Opposition Would Prefer to Forget
Yesterday, The New Times published a retrospective on last winter's mass protests, highlighting how the Internet played a vital role in mobilizing thousands of people in a city that, until then, could only produce a few hundred demonstrators at a time. The middle class, the youth, and the technophiles of Moscow had awakened and the possibilities seemed endless. Then came the schism.
