Evegeny Morozov, blogging at Foreign Policy:
One of the Kremlin’s pet new media projects has been a site called liberty.ru. It’s been set up under the auspices of the Fund for Effective Politics, a think-tank headed by Gleb Pavlovsky, who has been instrumental in shaping the Russian ideology of the last decade. The official objective of liberty.ru — as articulated by Pavlovsky — has been to tap into the immense creativity of the Russian internet users and involve them in producing ideas that could make Kremlin’s increasingly unappealing ideological package relevant to the younger generations. Liberty.ru was meant to become something like Russia’s DailyKos or Talking Points Memo.
As far as I can judge, they are still quite far from achieving this ambitious objective (much like many other Kremlin-affiliated new media projects). However, they may have become useful on another front. As I was surfing the Russian web today, I stumbled upon a fascinating post on liberty.ru (in Russian). It was an announcement of an inagural event for a series of public lectures of…”Kremlin’s School of Bloggers”. And who was chosen the kick off this series? Alexey Chadayev, who is the younger version of Pavlovsky — a very young (but already very seasoned) political technologist with a very good knowledge of the Internet. His lecture (which took place on May 14th) is pompously entitled “the information activities in the blogosphere: goals and objectives. View from 2009”.
Apparently, more public lectures — probably from other Kremlin insiders — are to follow. Extensive “googling” for “Kremlin’s school of bloggers” reveals at least one interesting project — Polit-TV.ru — a series of ideological YouTube videos, all branded with a funny Kremlin-shaped logo, which aim to rally up support for Kremlin’s recent public campaigns (for example, here’s their video supporting Medvedev’s call to adhere to the historical truth and counter the foreign propaganda). What other projects should we expect from “Kremlin’s school of bloggers”?
La Russophobe 
The internet is a window to the outside world of ideas that the Kremlin must curtain. They can spoon feed their propaganda slop on the censored airwaves and most of the newspapers, but, the internet is tougher to control.
They already have roving organized monitors and agitators trolling the LJ boards and accounts are capriciously cancelled.
I’ve noticed that when there is an article critical of Putin/Russia in the western press that their trolls are out in force in the comments.
I’m betting that in the next few years they’ll have filters in place like China.
The next Iron Curtain to descend will be virtual.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people I say. There is a breaking point, it is possible that a whole nation’s mental health became compromised.
Rooski living there, need not be related, but being in the group have a higher incidence of schizophrenia. Foolish marches and parades etc.
Gogol or Hohol in Ukrainian, wrote an excellent description of insanity in “Diary of a Madman”. The diary of Axenty Ivanovich Poprishchin, a Ukrainian civil servant in his 40s. The story starts with an entry: The day does not start well for Poprishchin, who gets up late and is late for work. Poprishchin notes in his diary that later that day he thinks he hears two dogs talking to each other in Russian. He further notes: “‘It can’t be true, I must be drunk.’ But I hardly ever drink.” Things go downhill quickly: Poprishchin has increased trouble at work, and on 13 November (year 1) he notes that he reads letters from the dogs to each other.
On 5 December (year 1) Poprishchin records that he read in the newspaper about the dispute of the succession of King Ferdinand VII of Spain (1833). On a date written “April 43rd, 2000” (April of year 2?) he writes: “Today is a day of great triumph. There is a king of Spain. He has been found at last. That king is me. I only discovered this today.” The date for the next entry in the diary is “86th Martober, between day and night” (October of year 2?). Poprishchin goes to work after a three week absence and then proceeds to greatly offend his boss and coworkers. Later, in an entry dated as “No date,” Poprishchin writes that he had been in a large crowd but “did not reveal [his] identity [as King Ferdinand VIII]” The date of the last entry of the diary is An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc., usually as some form of binary object. The name of referred object is alte5378.f1.gif (February of year 3?). Poprishchin notes that people are pouring cold water over his head, his head is spinning, the sky whirls.
AAH! This article jogs my memory. What is needed in Russia today, is something that was popular in the soviet- good-ole-days: ‘An organized/spontaneous demonstration of affection for the leader!’ That! is what will save the day, and encourage all these fresh would-be bloggers for Putler, to go out there, and …get-’em!
But, don’t we get a heavy dose of those goons, here already? YOY!
R.D.
Heh, I just saw such complete zombie article in Live journal… such a shame… that blog turned into a real hole ever since Russian company took over it and now it’s like a total cloaca of the Russian mind… :(