Abstract
The rapid growth of the Russian Internet offers great advantages, especially for geographical and cultural peripheries. Nevertheless, the locational inequality in Internet usage within the country has not yet been bridged. Meanwhile, some Russian villagers living in the countryside have started to ‘blog back’ to the metropolitan centres. How is the Russian village represented in these accounts by digital’nye derevenščiki? What power relations are characteristic of villagers and townspeople, as they meet in online forums and blogs? The case studies presented in this essay show that, although the traditional dichotomist opposition between centre and periphery has undergone substantial redefinition, the significance of these concepts as value-loaded, culturally coded discursive entities still prevails. The manifestation of hybrid identities, explored in recent research on transnational diasporic communities, has not yet affected the rather static conceptions of core and periphery at work within Russian borders and on the Russian Internet.
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Notes
For President Medvedev’s self-positioning as a new media expert, see Buckley (2007).
The honoured guest went to the post office, where everything was ready to receive the President. In order to demonstrate the high-speed Internet (fiber optic lines had been laid in the backwoods), Medvedev’s own page was opened for the occasion. As he saw his blog on the monitor, Dmitrij Anatol’evič smiled.
For a critical account of the Electronic Russia Programme, see Baigarova (2010).
The formation and development of a common information space is extremely important for Russia, with its vast expanses and significant differences in living standards. To this end, the federal company Počta Rossii [Russian Post] is working to create infrastructure enabling public access to Internet resources through the establishment of a network of post office access points (APs) and public access points (PAPs) to the Internet. […] The project is being implemented under the heading KiberPočt@ and aims to bridge ‘digital inequality’ in Russia.
There is a significant gap between the population in cities and in the countryside—the ratio of users is 2:1—while the gap between the capital and other, smaller cities is practically nil.
For actual data see FOM. Issledovanija “Internet v Rossii.” In Fond Obščestvennoе Mneniе http://bd.fom.ru/map/projects/internet/ (accessed 3 Nov 2010). For typical accounts of the situation in the rural regions, see Korolev (2010) and Ol’khov (2010).
The immensity of Russian land is currently being redefined by the variable geometry of communications and communication nodes; as a result, some areas are linked up to the new world, while others are further away than ever, even as they contemplate the images and listen to the sounds of a new era to which they do not belong.
I would just beg outsiders not to interfere with their caustic and sometimes evil ‘rhetoric’—I just want to determine whether or not our villagers support us in our initiative.
And I finally realized why the Internet crowd rushed so determinedly to watch Andrianovka. For many years we did everything to try and forget about the existence of the Russian countryside. And yet this is ninety percent of Russia’s territory, which has become exotic to us. We see Turkish palm trees more often than village roosters.
But most importantly, the city person with his ‘corporate airs’ and pseudo-social skills can sometimes find it difficult to be open and sincere, and not smile like a robot […].
We live in the twenty-first century and have all the necessary technologies to live a modern life outside the city. Only we ourselves can make our lives outside the city into those we see in our dreams.
Despite being classified by friends and media as a “Russian downshifter,” he nevertheless ardently denies this categorisation (Gorčev 17 Feb 2010). All blog entries by Gorčev as well as comments by his readers are referenced by the name, nickname, or pseudonym of the respective user and the date of that particular post in parentheses.
For an insight into his literary and artistic production see his personal homepage, http://gorchev.lib.ru/.
Today the blog is still available as a memorial site.
“Backwoods—this word almost always sounds derogatory. And yet, the longer I live here, the more I like it.”
The rural mosquito is unlike the urban mosquito. It has one chance in a million and therefore it does not sniff out the tastiest place, but stings in mid-flight, just following its nose.
And by the way there’s even Internet out here in the country. True it is very, very slow Internet, just as it should be in the country. The Global Information Space drips in a thin stream from the outer reaches of the universe through some infrared craziness on the side of a mobile phone, and this craziness agrees to work only at a specific angle and if placed on one of Count Tolstoj’s novels—something just as thick and unhurried as the village Gostilovo.
Fuck the crowds and city fumes/Craving only spiritual food,/I’ve headed off for keeps/To the village of Old Shitheaps./But I can’t live without high tech/Life offline is absolute dreck/And so I filch, like a fucking drone,/Picking up the neighbour’s Megafon [Megafon is a major Russian network provider].
The conflicts that may arise with the arrival of the city dwellers in the Russian countryside, the “fears of the natives” [“strakh aborigenov”] concerning a “recolonization” [“rekolonizacija”] of the villages by the metropolitan elites, are summarized in a recent article by Natal’ja Granina (2010).
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In memory of Dmitrij Gorčev.
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Schmidt, H. Digital’nye derevenščiki/digital villagers: Russian online projects from the countryside. Stud East Eur Thought 63, 95–109 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-011-9137-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-011-9137-z