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

On May 27, 1995, Valentin Stepankov, the general prosecutor of Russia, issued order No. 21/13/20, which established that permissions to conduct surveillance were to be issued by the general prosecutor and his deputies and main military prosecutor.

Based on authors’ conversations with former KGB technical officers.

Sergei Koval, interview with authors, Speech Technologies Center, June 2009.

According to the testimony provided by Kalgin before the internal investigation comission of the KGB in 1991. The testimony was quoted by Andrei Uglanov, “Na Lybyanke posle putsha” [On Lubyanka After the Putsch], Argumenti Nedeli , Moscow, August 17, 2011.

Urushadze Georgy, Izbrannie mesta iz perepiski s vragami [Selected Passages from Correspondence with Enemies] (St. Petersburg: European House, 1995), 349–350. After the putsch Urushadze was given access to the documentation of the internal investigation of the KGB and put copies of employees’ reports of the Twelfth Department in his book.

Kalgin’s testimony before the internal investigation commission of the KGB on the events of August 1991, quoted by Andrei Uglanov, “Na Lybyanke posle putsha” [On Lubyanka After the Putsch], Argumenti Nedeli , Moscow, August 17, 2011.

The description of Stasi’s wiretapping system is based on information provided by Detlev Vreisleben, an informal historian of Stasi surveillance equipment who works in Stasi archives, for our website Agentura.ru, www.agentura.ru/museum/melton/stasitapping.

On September 9, 1999, shortly after midnight, between six and eight hundred pounds of explosives detonated on the ground floor of an apartment building on Guryanova Street in southeast Moscow. The nine-story building was destroyed, killing 94 people and injuring 249. On September 13 a large bomb exploded at 5 a.m. in the basement of an apartment block on Kashirskoye Highway in southern Moscow: 118 people died, and 200 injured.

Boris Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries (New York: PublicAffairs, 2000), 289–298.

Elena Tregubova, Baiki kremlevskogo diggera [Tales of a Kremlin Digger] (Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2003), 197.

On the loan, the bank refused to accept the domestic currency bonds, known as OVVZs. OVVZ bonds were issued by Vnesheconombank, so the bank in fact refused to accept its own securities. Andrei Zolotov Jr., “Media Say Aides Keep Yeltsin in Dark,” Moscow Times , July 29, 1999, www.themoscowtimes.com/sitemap/free/1999/7/article/media-say-aides-keep-yeltsin-in-dark/274376.html.

Tregubova, Baiki kremlevskogo diggera , 196–197.

Sergei Parkhomenko, interview with authors, November 2014.

NTV, “Geroi Dnya” [Hero of the Day], interview with Vladimir Putin, August 9, 1999, http://tvoygolos.forum-tvs.ru/elita/elitatext/1999.08.09.htm.

Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov, First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President (New York: PublicAffairs, 2000), 83.

Mikhail Shevelev, interview with authors, November 2014.

Tregubova, Baiki kremlevskogo diggera , 163–166.

Gevorkyan, Timakova, and Kolesnikov, First Person .

Putin visited Finland October 22–23, 1999. For details, see NTV reportage, 1999, www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYMng6H7WCo.

Alexander Chudodeev, “Inakomislyashchy” [Dissident], an interview with Pavlovsky, Itogi , December 12, 2012, www.itogi.ru/spetzproekt/2012/49/184673.html.

Gleb Pavlovsky, interview with authors, October 2014.

Tregubova, Baiki kremlevskogo diggera , 216.

Putin’s statement at the FSB headquarters, December 20, 1999, YouTube (in Russian, with English subtitles), www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb63vKtCvRo.

Oleg Rykov, interview with authors, August 2014.

The nongovernmental organization was the Russian Institute of Public Networks (ROSNIIROS).

Alexey Platonov, interview with authors, September 2014.

Alexey Soldatov, interview with authors, July–September 2014.

The text of the draft is available on the site of libertarium.ru, www.libertarium.ru/gvt-names.

Anton Nossik, interview with authors, August 2014.

Platonov, interview with authors, September 2014.

See Anton Nossik’s LiveJournal.com entry, http://dolboeb.livejournal.com/2682401.html.

Dmitry Pavlov, “Vzyali Vladimira Gusinskogo” [Gusinsky is Caught], Kommersant , June 13, 2000, www.kommersant.ru/doc/17059.

Shenderovich, interview with authors, December 2014. See also Victor Shenderovich, Zdes bylo NTV [ Here Was NTV ] (Moscow: Zakharov, 2004).

Oleg Lurie was a good example of such journalism. He became famous in 1999 by exposing corruption in the Kremlin’s renovations. In the early 2000s his “investigations” were published by Versiya and Novaya Gazeta , and he liked to drive a shining new BMW 7. In 2008 he was convicted and imprisoned for extortion; he had requested $50,000 from a senator in exchange for removing kompromat about him from the Internet. He was released in 2011 and immediately launched the journal Jins (slang, a paid journalistic story).

Andrei Soldatov, Kremlin.com, Index on Censorship, no. 1, 2010, http://ioc.sagepub.com/content/39/1/71.abstract.

Agentura.ru was inspired by the Federation of American Scientists Secrecy Project led by Steven Aftergood and was supported by the Relcom ISP from September 2000 to the spring of 2006.

A group of FSB officers arrived at the editorial offices of Versiya claiming they were looking for information published in an article by Soldatov in May 2002 about the construction of residential apartment complexes on the premises of former FSB special facilities in Moscow.

Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan, Marina Latysheva, and Anna Stavitskaya, Journalisti i terrorism [ Journalists and Terrorism ] (Moscow: Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, 2008).

ComScore, “Worldwide Search Top 10,” December 2007, Total World Age 15+, Home and Work Locations, January 23, 2008, www.comscore.com/Insights/Press-Releases/2008/01/Baidu-Ranked-Third-Largest-World-Wide-Search-Engine.

Lev Gershenzon, interview with authors, August 2014.

Gershenzon was summoned to the meeting with Surkov and Kostin by Dmitry Ivanov, a projects director of Yandex. Before Yandex, Ivanov had worked in Pavlovsky’s foundation and succeeded Marina Litvinovich as chief of the FEP Internet department, when she was given Strana.ru to run.