Lebedev and Tolstaia during the interview (picture Eugene Gorny)

Starting today in Berlin, re:publica - with about 2.500 participants one of the biggest conferences and multi-media events with a special focus on social media - offers lots of inspiring talks, presentations and roundtables. Some of the events are available as live streams.

  Left: police at the crime scene in Tel Aviv. Right: anti-gay cartoon circulating on the RuNet

      Twitter userpics L'vovskii, Gavrilov, Vodennikov

Two workshops, held in the UK next Spring, address a broad range of new-media related questions. Initiated by Natalya Rulyova & Jeremy Morris (Birmingham), our own Vlad Strukov (Leeds), and Seth Graham (SSEES), they bear the overall title New Media in New Europe-Asia. The organizers are applying for CEELBAS support and plan to publish a selection of papers in a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies. 

        old & current blog userpics of vodennikov, kuznetsov, and rubinstein

Victory day is one of the most important dates in contemporary Russia. Some historians believe it to be the last event that is able to unite the diverging Russian society. Thus, it is no surprise that the topic is extensively covered on Runet. The Georgievskaja lenta, the Ribbon of St. George widely used in Russia to commemorate the sacrifices and heroism of Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War, ornaments the welcome page of the popular searching engine Yandex.ru.

   Twitter logos

... записался добровольцем?" Похоже, что известный слоган придется заменить: Фраза, которая в последние дни после заведения ЖЖ президентом Медведевым прошла про Рунету, звучит несколько иначе: "А ты уже зафрендил президента?" Судя по дискуссиям среди пользователей, ответ на этот вопрос сугубо личный. А мы, зафрендим президента, что ли? Э.Ш.

Yesterday I had a really interesting „surf“ through Runet which led me from the website of fantasy writer Sergey Lukyanenko to the social network platform “Berloga” of the ruling party „United Russia”. Initially I just wanted to look up the date of first publication for Lukyanenko’s famous “hacker bible”, “The Labyrinth of Reflections” (1996, btw). I entered his homepage and got momentarily attracted by the diversity of web usages and Internet services offered. Would I like to read one of his novels as e-book on my mobile phone? Does his new weblog Dr. Piliulkin differ very much from the previous one he wrote under the nickname Dr. Livsy (which he closed down in July 2008 because he felt himself misunderstood by his readers)? But before I even could make up my mind to visit Lukyanenkos new ZheZhe, I came across an announcement in the news section of the website telling me that on January 19th, the famous science fiction writer has been "on duty" (dezhurstvo) on the social network platform “Berloga”. I decided to take a look. The social network “Berloga”, part of the only recently created web portal of “United Russia”, positions itself as a place “where different political forces, people with diverging opinions discuss the most actual questions and problems. The only thing uniting them is their love for Russia and their aim to take care of her prosperous future.” (sorry for this probably odd translation). "Берлога - это место, где различные политические силы, люди с разными убеждениями, обсужают самые актуальные вопросы и проблемы. Единственное, что объединяет нас всех - любовь к России и забота о её благе." Indeed, the site offers a list of communities and discussion forums dedicated to the different political parties in Russia beginning with the “Communist Party” and ending with “Narodnyj sojuz”. The “berlogery” are encouraged to join the forum of the party they associate themselves with. I am puzzled. Does this make sense: to represent one’s political opponents on the own website? While in “real life” active political opposition is reduced to almost zero? Observers have voiced different explanations. Thus, Vadim Treskin assumes that the aim of the “Berloga” social network might be to integrate the young political elites of the opposition into the “United Russia” movement. To give a more accurate account of the current life on the site would need more time than I have today. What is evident though is the creative adoption of Runet traditions and neologisms: the anagrammatical word play transforming “blogery” into “berlogery” with the help of the party acronym “ER” is an intelligent trick. The same is valid for the community appeal implicit in the web address of the project www.togeth.er.ru. Finally, what did Lukyanenko and his readers talk about during his “dezhurstvo”? A quick browsing showed that questions of literary genre were addressed as well as more directly political topics (concerning corruption, Putin’s strange status as party-leader without party membership). That brings me back to some of our previous posts where we discussed the impact and the significance of such (more or less) open web controversies within a political climate that is more than often determined by intolerance and violence against critics. Is the "Berloga" project only a smart and especially efficient sort of political technology? Or do make controversial discussions on the web a difference regardless of the communication contexts in which they are embedded? H.S. P.S. Sorry for the Pidgin-English. Dear native speakers among my blogger-colleagues, if you feel like correcting the one or the other sentence, please do not hesitate :)

                                                                         picture of the FoR lecture announcement, tanyant's userpic, RL's PushkinLast week, the Future of Russian project kicked off with two guest lectures on the RuLiNet - the Russian literary Internet. Roman Leibov (Tartu) and yours truly (Bergen) met with students and staff for a two-hour lunch session on the early RuNet, writer's blogs, and more.Accompanied by sounds of crunching foccaccia and bursting cherry tomatoes, Roman Leibov led off with an overview of the fifteen-year old history of Russian online literature. For the entire lecture, do download the podcast - it is fun to hear, and the speaker knows what he is talking about as Russia's alleged first blogger (that RL was not literally the first Russian-speaking blogger is another story). But for those who prefer a written summary: among other things, Roman discussed the link between perestroika and digital developments; the role of diaspora and samizdat culture in the RuLiNet's early stages; and digital culture's impact on Russian reading habits - think the popularity of blogs, and short or visually oriented posts in particular - and on the literary production process. In a lively discussion, the speaker was implored to 'tell us how to become a famous blogger and web writer!' The answer? Gee, I forgot.After a break - and more foccaccia and tomatoes - I talked about Tat'iana Tolstaia's blog tanyant. Again, the podcast (& PPT) will tell you more; but alternatively, here is another mini-synopsis. Tolstaia's blog, I argued after introducing her prose, may seem radically innovative at first: the author avidly toys with its multimedia potential and explicitly conceives of it as a discursive space where linguistic laconism is de rigueur. But if you look closer, TT the writer and TT the blogger are not that far apart: not only do tanyant's posts become purely text-oriented with time; but the language errors that she promises to make in advance, lack in practice. Ultimately, in her blog, as in her print writing, Tolstaia is a professional writer to the bone, who meticulously crafts even as mundane a text as a cake recipee. More vivid discussion, on Tolstaia's son Tioma Lebedev's highly popular blog, among other things, followed. With a look at his blog and site, the session ended and all went their own way - an 'own way' which my co-speaker managed to transform into a genuine digital travelogue ('Пойду что ли опять на знаменитый рынок гад морских нюхать. Они, с родным простившись дном, лежат там в морге ледяном. Впрочем, пять часов нюхать тоже устанешь'), interactive and richer with multimedia elements than tanyant ever was.But then such an extensive blog report is not surprising for someone who was an ultra-active RuLiNet-chik from the start. If the hypertext Roman is perhaps Leibov's most famous online project, then his Pushkin Page is at least as intriguing. Visitors of this site's ssylki page are treated to a frighteningly large number of links to Pushkin-devoted pages... which are hidden under quotations from the poet's work. 'Cybermocking' the adoration of the Great Writer, the Pushkin Page parallels other web projects which, in Dmitrii Golynski's words, 'sarcastically take up arms against the figure par excellence of the Russian classical tradition: the national poet Alexander Pushkin.' For examples, go see net artist El' zelenaia's Winking Pushkin page, where users can alter the poet's face with their mouse, or Sergei Teterin's site devoted to Cyber-Pushkin - a machine generating cyberpoetry based on Pushkin's lexicon and style.For me, the session - and my digitalized talk - evoked thoughts about the phenomenon of podcasting. Not only scholars, but writers, too, can be heard and seen in a rapidly growing amount of digital mp3 and video files. On the where and what of that development, more soon.ERhttp://www.uib.no/rg/future_r/nyheter/2009/03/future-of-russian-podcasts

 ...and it has beaches, too Did you buy your agenda for next year already? In September 2010, the University of St Andrews will host a conference on 21st-Century European Literature. 'Mapping New Trends' - that is what the organizers hope to do, together with speakers specializing in any contemporary European literature, including Russian.I won't repeat the entire call for papers: you can easily find that elsewhere. Here it suffices to know that papers about 'Blosphere Narratives (Between Essay and Fiction)' are warmly welcomed. Now it may be my increasingly WWW-oriented mind, but it surprises me that an academic gathering on new literary trends only devotes one out of 26 possible topics to a digital development. Or have digital practices become so intrinsically embedded in contemporary culture that there is no need to point them out separately? Surely the web is bound to pop up in sessions devoted to, say, 'Diasporic identities,' 'New takes on old genres,' or 'Archiving and memorialising the past'?Digital or not, the conference is collecting proposals for individual papers or panels between now and September 1. Anyone longing to share thoughts on 'what is new, right now, in the national literature you research; what patterns are already discernable, what clusters of texts exploring common themes, ethical or aesthetic imperatives, theoretical or generic preoccupations, can be identified in the new millenium' - write the Russian-literature convenor and prepare yourself for Scottish autumn days.ER