Андрей Солдатов - The Red Web - The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries

On the day Irina visited, people at Kaspersky were debating Anatoly Karachinsky’s decision to move his software company, Luxoft, out of Russia. It prompted a natural question about whether any large international companies could stay. Irina’s sources in the company said that many people at Kaspersky Lab regarded Putin’s words about the Internet and CIA—and the offensive on Yandex—as a hidden threat. They wondered what to do.

In the center of Moscow a modern office building was erected in 2007 at a time of massive renovation around the city. The building, which houses Silver-City, a business center, has all the hallmarks of that period: all glass and concrete, with ugly rectangular forms that hark back to the 1970s, defined in outlandish orange stripes. It was at this building on June 10, 2014, that Putin was to meet with the leaders of the Russian Internet for the first time in fifteen years; the last and only previous meeting was in December 1999.

Back then people spoke openly in front of Putin and were not afraid to oppose what they saw as the government’s power-grab to control the Internet. They did not fear Putin in those days, and by the end of the meeting Putin had supported those who objected to the government intrusion. At that time the Internet was new, and so was the hodge-podge of entrepreneurs who met with Putin. A decade and a half later the Russian Internet had grown into a $143 billion annual business, employing over 1.3 million professionals, generating 8.5 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product and accounting for 2.5 percent of all its trade. [16] Statistics 2013, the Russian Association for Electronic Communications, June 10, 2014, http://raec.ru/times/detail/3472 . In those same years Putin’s government had imposed surveillance on the Internet—the SORM black boxes and, ultimately, filtering and censorship.

The security at the meeting was strict, and journalists were admitted only with special identity cards issued just for this event. Before Putin arrived, there was a session about the future of the Internet. It was more like a wake. No one jumped up and shouted about the lack of Internet freedom. In fact, the subject of state control over the Internet was never mentioned; rather, it was evident that Putin, not yet in the room, held the upper hand. This reality weighed heavily on those who were present, including Volozh, the founder of Yandex, who had also been present fifteen years earlier and walked out of that meeting with the pencil. At this very moment Volozh was feeling the Kremlin pressure on the business he had built, and everybody knew it.

They could see a powerful reminder in the chair marked “VKontakte.” In the chair was not Durov, the founder; instead, there was Boris Dobrodeyev, then deputy chief executive of VKontakte, whose presence underscored the growing clout of the Kremlin. Dobrodeyev is a scion of the post-Soviet media establishment; his father, Oleg, is head of the television colossus known as the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. [17] At the time, Boris Dobrodeyev was rumored to become the new CEO of VKontakte; he got the position in September 2014. “Son of State Media Chief Appointed CEO of Russia’s VKontakte,” Moscow Times , September 19, 2014, www.themoscowtimes.com/article/son-of-state-media-chief-appointed-ceo-of-russias-vkontakte/507411.html . When Dobrodeyev sat in the chair, it was a sign that other chairs could also suffer the same fate—the founders could be replaced. The blogger Leviev, who had invented Alexey Navalny’s big red button, was present at the meeting because his company was broadcasting it. When he saw how Durov’s chair had been filled, he immediately thought of the peril that faced Volozh and Yandex. “Yandex’s business, all its ‘circulatory system,’ is in Russia: data centers, offices, the staff. Yes, there are offices abroad, but it is a drop in the sea, insignificant. If Volozh was to say something wrong—it will be very easy to take his business away,” he told us later.

Putin was late, as usual, and when he did arrive, he didn’t immediately enter the conference room; rather, he was shown a small exhibition of Internet start-ups in the hall. He was escorted by Kirill Varlamov, who had grown up in Ekaterinburg, graduated from the local technical university, and joined Uralmash, the mammoth metallurgical factory, as an engineer. In the early 2000s he founded a small software company and soon moved to Moscow. In 2011 he caught the eye of some people at one of Putin’s pet projects, the Agency of Strategic Initiatives. It was launched when Putin was prime minister and was designed to be a high-tech incubator, just like a much-publicized effort by Medvedev known as Skolkovo. Varlamov joined the agency, which proved to be a wise decision; he was introduced to Putin. In the same year, when Putin formed the All-Russia People’s Front, Varlamov joined. He was included on a list of nearly five hundred people who were prominent Putin political supporters, most of them celebrities; he was the only one with an Internet background. After Putin was elected president, Varlamov was made the head of a state-funded venture capital fund, giving him power over the budget available to Internet start-ups. By then Medvedev’s Skolkovo was in clear decline. Varlamov maintained a key position at the All-Russia People’s Front.

Russia had produced an entire generation of bright entrepreneurs in the first years of the digital revolution, but Putin was not interested in them. He wanted, most of all, someone loyal. Varlamov’s appearance at the June meeting signaled that Putin had triumphed. Varlamov’s fund had even organized the meeting, and when Putin appeared, Varlamov sat on his right—there was no doubt that Varlamov was the star of the show. Volozh, who was a genuine Internet legend in Russia, looked uneasy. He was exceedingly cautious and repeated his line that there are very few countries in the world where the local Internet companies dominate, and these companies became prominent not because of protection but because they were left alone.

The sole question about repressive measures on the Internet was raised by Dmitry Grishin of Mail.ru, Russia’s leading e-mail service. An engineer by training, Grishin, thirty-five years old, was nervous as he looked at Putin. He began by saying that most Russian software advances had happened because the state left the inventors alone. “And we have this mentality,” he said. “We have this mentality that we count on ourselves.” He added that contacts with the authorities seldom lead to good things, and “in principle, if you can hide, it is better to hide.”

Putin sternly interrupted him. “It’s wrong,” he said, shaking his head. “First of all, you can’t hide from us.” The remark said everything about the state of the Internet in Russia: it had grown immensely, had enabled appeals for freedom, and yet there was no place to hide.

Grishin reddened and said excitedly, “We often hear that all Internet users are from another planet. But we do love our country; we want to help to make it comfortable to live and work in. And we understand that the Internet has grown and it is now an integral part of the society. Therefore, in principle, we understand that the regulation, it’s necessary. And often the ideas in the regulation, they are very correct. But, unfortunately, sometimes it happens that realization, in general, is frightening. And it would be great to develop some sort of process that allows us not only to listen but also to be listened to. It would be very, very important!” [18] “Internet Entrepreneurship in Russia Forum,” transcripts, Kremlin.ru, June 10, 2014, http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/22470 .

It was a polite appeal but, in its timidity, reflected the reality of Putin and the Internet. The entrepreneurs and businessmen were not challenging the Kremlin; there were no new proposals that day, no confrontations. Some of those present were worried that a discussion might have been started about a project called Cheburashka, to create a purely domestic Internet—inaccessible from abroad—named after a popular children’s cartoon character. The project was suggested by a Russian senator in April, but, thankfully, it did not come up.