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

Print book interior design by Cynthia Young

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Soldatov, Andrei

The red web : the struggle between Russia’s digital dictators and the new online revolutionaries / Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan. —First Edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61039-57-3-1 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-1-61039-574-8 (electronic)

1. Internet—Political aspects—Russia (Federation) 2. Information society—Political aspects—Russia (Federation) 3. Internet—Access control—Russia (Federation) 4. Electronic surveillance—Russia (Federation) 5. Freedom of information—Russia (Federation) 6. Russia (Federation)—Politics and government—1991–I. Borogan, I. (Irina) II. Title.

JN6695.A55A859 2015

303.48’330947—dc23

2015015850

ISBNs: 978-1-61039-573-1 (hardcover), 978-1-61039-574-8 (electronic),

978-1-61039-957-9 (paperback)

LSC-C

E3-20170715-JV-NF

Pew Research Center, “Internet Seen as Positive Influence on Education but Negative on Morality in Emerging and Developing Nations,” PewGlobal, March 19, 2015, www.pewglobal.org/2015/03/19/internet-seen-as-positive-influence-on-education-but-negative-influence-on-morality-in-emerging-and-developing-nations.

The details of Trakhtman’s biography are largely drawn from the memoirs published online by the Vinitsky family; Trakhtman was a friend of the family for decades. See: http://arkady-vinitsky-100years.weebly.com; also, see Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, http://www.rujen.ru.

Konstantin Kalachev, V kruge tretiem [In the Third Circle]. Kalachev worked as a researcher at Marfino from 1947 to 1996, and in 1999 he wrote a history of the Marfino project. When the authors of this book called the Research Institute of Automation ( http://niia.ru/eng.htm), a successor to the sharashka that occupies the building in Marfino to this day, we were told that Kalachev’s book is the only authoritative source of information. The book was published and is available only at http://anmal.narod.ru/kniga/kniga.html.

The general was Foma Zhelezov, chief of the department in the security service in charge of developing various kinds of technology, from radios and weapons to listening devices. Lev Kopelev, Utili moi pechaly [Soothe My Sorrows] (Moscow: Novaya Gazeta, 2011), 234.

Editorial, “Ob Odnoy antipatrioticheskoy gruppe teatralnikh critikov” [About one group of unpatriotic theatrical critics], Pravda , January 28, 1949, www.ihst.ru/projects/sohist/books/cosmopolit/100.htm.

Kopelev, Utili moi pechaly [Soothe My Sorrows], 239.

Vladimir Fridkin, interview with authors, September 2014.

Chester Carlson, an American physicist and inventor, created a dry photocopying technique in 1938 and patented his invention on October 6, 1942. US Patent, US 2297691 A, via Google Patents, www.google.com/patents/US2297691.

Joseph Stalin, “Pechat kak Kollektivny Organizator” [The Press as Collective Organizer], Pravda , May 6, 1923.

Yevgenia Albats, The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia—Past, Present, and Future (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1994), 234. A photocopy of the document is in the Russian edition of the book, Mina zamedlennogo deistvia. Politichesky portret KGB (Moscow, 1992), 314.

Rimantas Pleikis, “Radiocenzura” [Radio Censorship], Agentura.ru, 2003, www.agentura.ru/equipment/radiocenzura.

Maria Orlova (Kopelev’s daughter), interview with authors, October 2014.

Yuri Andropov, “Ob Ispolzovanii evreiskimi natcionalistami mezjnudarodnogo telephonnogo kanala svyazi” [About the Use of International Phone Calls by Jewish Nationalists], order No. 1428-A, June 1975, quoted in Evreiskaya emigratsia v svete novikh documentov , ed. B. Morozov, 41–44 (Tel Aviv: The Cummings Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1998).

Ibid., 41–44.

Ibid.

Alexander Paritsky, communications with authors, October 2014.

Gennady Kudryavtsev, interview with authors, October 2014.

In 1989 Kudryavtsev finally found a way to bypass the restrictions. Denis Thatcher, the husband of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, was a counsel to Cable & Wireless, the British telecom company. Kudryavtsev suggested to him that they launch a joint project in Moscow to establish dozens of phone boxes for automatic international connection in hotels and airports. The project was given a green light, and once again automatic international calls were possible from Moscow, at least in a very limited way. But the hour was late; these were the final years before the Soviet collapse.

Edward Fredkin, interview with authors, October 2014.

Yevgeny Velikhov, interview with authors, September to November 2014.

For details of the history of Kurchatov Institute see “Kurchatov Institute: Current Life of the Institute Celebrating Jubilees,” www.iter.org/doc/www/content/com/Lists/Stories/Attachments/1575/Kurchatov_Institute.pdf.

Velikhov, interview with authors, September 2014.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf: Memoirs of a Literary Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), 142.

At the same time, Alexandrov hid a fact about his past that could have called into question his loyalty: when he was sixteen years old, he joined the White Army and fought the Communists during the Russian Civil War. Anatoly P. Alexandrov, Akademik Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov: Pryamaya Rech [ Academician Anatoly Alexandrov: Direct Speech ] (Moscow: Nauka, 2002), 15.

Bardin, interview with authors, August 2014; and recollections of Demos employees published at http://news.demos.su/private/demos.html.

Alexey Soldatov and Valery Bardin, interviews with authors, August–October 2014.

The programmers from Kurchatov Institute worked in conjuction with colleagues at the Ministry of Car Manufacturing.

Soldatov and Velikhov, interviews with authors, September 2014.

Bardin, interview with authors, August 2014.

The headquarters of the Twelfth Department on Varsonofyevsky Lane was first described in Boris Gulko, Yuri Felshtinsky, Vladimir Popov, and Viktor Kortschnoi, “The KGB Plays Chess: The Soviet Secret Police and the Fight for the World Chess Crown,” Russell Enterprises, 2010.

Andrei Bykov (deputy director of the FSB from 1992 to 1998), interview with authors, September 2014.

Kalgin’s activities are described in a report of the KGB internal comission investigating the events of August 1991 under director Vadim Bakatin. The report, made public in 2000, is available at http://shieldandsword.mozohin.ru/documents/solution.htm. A photocopy of the report of one of the women, Tatyana Lanina, was published by Yevgenia Albats in the Russian version of her book, Mina zamedlennogo deistvia. Politichesky portret KGB (Moscow, 1992), later published in English as The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia—Past, Present, and Future (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1994).