[Infowarrior] - Kremlin Launches ‘School of Bloggers’

[Richard Forno]

Kremlin Launches ‘School of Bloggers’

     * By Nathan Hodge Email Author
     * May 27, 2009  |
     * 10:34 am  |
     * Categories: Info War, Russia

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/kremlin-launches-school-of-bloggers/

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently made a foray into Web 2.0  
with the launch of his own blog. Now it looks as if the Kremlin’s  
embrace of social media is tightening.

Evgeny Morozov, who writes Foreign Policy’s fascinating Net.effect  
blog, stumbled upon the announcement for a series of public lectures  
on the “Kremlin’s School of Bloggers.” The announcement is on  
Liberty.ru, a sort of DailyKos for the pro-Kremlin set.

Unfortunately, we missed the inaugural lecture, delivered on May 14 by  
Alexey Chadayev, the director of the Kremlin’s school of bloggers.  
Chadayev (pictured, with pipe) already has an impressive resume: He  
lists his credentials as “famous political scientist, blogger,  
activist, doctoral candidate in cultural studies, docent at Russian  
State University of the Humanities, member of the Public Chamber,  
editor in chief of the online portal Liberty.ru, and author of the  
book, Putin: His Ideology.” Give this man a Twitter account, and  
you’ll have the Karl Rove of the Russian establishment.

The Russian government was slow to pick up on new media — meaning it  
was always a step behind domestic political opposition as well as more  
serious opponents. Take the case of Kavkaz Center: a pro-Chechen  
website launched at the beginning of the Second Chechen War in 1999.  
In the early days of the conflict, Kavkaz Center was an effective  
propaganda site; it also pioneered a lot of the information warfare  
tactics seen on jihadist websites, posting “trophy videos” of  
roadside bomb attacks and ambushes against Russian soldiers. Russian  
authorities countered with lame sites like Chechnyafree.ru, but they  
never quite caught on.

But in recent years, the Kremlin and its online supporters have become  
much more adept at using the Web as a tool of information war. Kavkaz  
Center was an early target of denial-of-service attacks; Russian  
“cyber militias” have been blamed for waging cyberwar on Georgia,  
Kyrgyzstan and Estonia.

With backing from Medvedev, however, the Kremlin seems to view the Web  
as more of an instrument of soft power instead of as an offensive  
weapon. Take, for instance, the case of the man who posted a comment  
on Medvedev’s blog about shabby conditions at a local children’s  
hospital. The Kremlin responded swiftly, shaming the local authorities  
into action. It’s an effective way to reinforce the president’s  
prestige — and it fits in with a historical pattern (”good czar vs.  
bad boyars“).

Liberty.ru, for instance, seems to be a more sophisticated way to  
build a community than the pro-Putin youth groups, which bore a  
disturbing resemblance to totalitarian youth movements of the 1930s.  
But it still offers up a Bizzaro World version of reality. The  
homepage, for instance, currently features a web video entitled  
“Battle for History: Georgia 1989″), which takes a conspiratorial  
view of the Soviet crackdown in Georgia 20 years ago, suggesting that  
the CIA was behind nationalist demonstrations that led to Georgia’s  
independence. If only.