While access to the internet itself remains largely unhindered in Russia, many bloggers have come under attack – both online and in person.

In the last two years there have been several cases of technical blocking and numerous cases of content removal. The authorities have also increasingly engaged in harassment of bloggers. At least 25 cases of blogger harassment, including 11 arrests, were registered between January 2009 and May 2010, compared with seven in 2006–08. In addition, dozens of blogs have reportedly been attacked in recent years by a hacker team called the Hell Brigade.

The report did point out areas where access to the internet remains a pressing issue:

The number of internet users jumped from 1.5 million in 1999 to 46.5 million in 2010, and grew by more than 13 million in the last two years, though this still leaves Russia’s penetration rate at 33 percent, lower than the rates in Central European countries. The level of infrastructure differs significantly from place to place, and gaps are evident between urban and rural areas as well as between different types of cities. The worst access conditions can be found in the North Caucasus and the industrial towns of Siberia and the Far East.

Corruption within the federal government also plays a part in what companies control internet access across the country:

Five access providers—Comstar, Vimpelcom, ER-Telecom, AKADO, and the state-owned SvyazInvest—controlled more than 67 percent of the broadband market as of February 2010. Regional branches of SvyazInvest account for 36 percent of subscribers, up from 27.8 percent in 2008. As at the federal level, regional dominance usually depends on political connections and the tacit approval of regional authorities. Although this situation is not the direct result of legal or economic obstacles, it nonetheless reflects an element of corruption that is widespread in the telecommunications sector and other parts of the Russian economy.

Greater concern, however, was focused on blocked online content, particularly opposition-oriented websites.

Although attempts to establish a comprehensive, centralized filtering system have been abandoned, several recent cases of blocking have been reported. In December 2009, a number of ISPs blocked access to the radical Islamist website Kavkaz Center. At almost the same time, the wireless provider Yota blocked several opposition sites. The practice of exerting pressure on service providers and content producers by telephone has become increasingly common. Police and representatives of the prosecutor’s office call the owners and shareholders of websites, and anyone else in a position to remove unwanted material and ensure that the problem does not come up again. Such pressure encourages self-censorship, and most providers do not wait for court orders to remove targeted materials.

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Content is often removed on the grounds that it violates Russia’s laws against “extremism.” Providers are punished for hosting materials that are proscribed in a list on the website of the Ministry of Justice. The list is updated on a monthly basis and included 748 items as of January 2011. The procedure for identifying extremist materials is nontransparent, leaving ample room for politically motivated content removal. There have been at least three cases of site closures, two of them temporary, on the grounds that the affected sites hosted extremist materials. In February 2010, the major opposition portal Grani.ru was checked for extremism, but the authorities apparently found nothing incriminating.

Among the most disturbing accounts in the report were cases of criminal suits and physical attacks against individual bloggers.

Since January 2009, police and the prosecutor’s office have launched at least 25 criminal cases against bloggers and forum commentators. While some cases were against individuals who posted clearly extremist content, others appear to be more politically motivated. The most severe and widely known sentence was that of Irek Murtazin, a Tatarstan blogger and journalist who received almost two years in prison in November 2009 for defamation.

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While traditional journalists and activists have faced a series of murders and severe beatings in recent years, physical attacks on Russian bloggers and online activists have so far been comparatively limited. However, one recent event drew significant attention. In November 2010, Oleg Kashin, a reporter for the newspaper Kommersant who was also well known as a blogger, was severely beaten near his home in Moscow. His coverage of protests and political youth movements had prompted vocal responses from pro-Kremlin groups in the past, but it was not known exactly who was responsible for the attack.

Read the report in its entirety by clicking here.

In a press release on Monday, Arkhipov stated that the news of a Russian telecommunications firm banning access to opposition websites was evidence of a growing trend in the country to persecute dissident activism as extremism.

“In this case, the actions of the authorities have once again confirmed that the country and political system are striving towards totalitarianism,” the lawyer asserted. “This tendency will continue down the road, with tougher methods in the battle against dissent and civil opposition movement and with the suppression of the basic rights and freedoms of citizens.”

The statement comes after Friday’s announcement by Corbina, one of Russia’s largest telecommunications providers and more commonly known under the brand name Beeline, that it was blocking access to the opposition websites Nazbol.ru and Limonov2012.ru due to “orders from above.”

The two websites are run by the banned National Bolshevik Party, whose leader, Eduard Limonov, has been integral in organizing the Strategy 31 series of protests in defense of the constitutional right to freedom of assembly.

Editors of the websites believe that Corbina’s ban speaks directly to the success of the rallies, which have recently gained a significant increase in both participation and international attention due to the brutality with which they have been suppressed by police.

Arkhipov was dismal in his prediction of the consequences of such persecution. “[Russians] are going to become witnesses to political persecution, through persecution against opposition leaders and civic activists, and through groundless detentions and political murders.”

Russian human rights advocates and opposition activists have long maintained that legislation from 2002 defining extremism is uselessly vague, and has given the authorities free reign to arrest anyone who they deem to be undesirable to the state. The notorious Center for Extremism Prevention of the Russian Interior Ministry, known as Center “E,” has been a source of particular concern, accused by Amnesty International of torturing criminal suspects to extract confessions. Additionally, Russia came under criticism last month in a United Nations report for its continued use of secret prisons to illegally detain political oppositionists and people blamed for “extremist” activity.

Dmitri Soloviev, a blogger and activist of the Oborona opposition movement, was notified on Monday of the December 31 decision. According to the document sent to the blogger, two groups of investigators found no evidence that any crime had actually been committed.

Soloviev had been charged in August 2008 with inciting hatred against police and federal security agents with a series of posts on LiveJournal.

Investigators had initially claimed that the five posts “instigated social strife” due to their content regarding the police.

The posts, under Soloviev’s username dimon77, included phrases accusing federal security agents of killing Russian children and assertions that the police would not succeed in breaking up the Oborona movement.

Advocates for the blogger maintained that the majority of the posts included material previously published elsewhere on the internet, and, furthermore, represented legitimate criticisms of specific actions of law enforcement officers.

As part of the investigation, Soloviev’s computer and notebook had both been confiscated, preventing him from completing his graduate dissertation.

Oborona leader Oleg Kozlovsky said that the decision to drop the case was “unprecedented in recent Russian history.” He added, however, that the case was very much an exception, as Soloviev’s case was only one of many similar, high-profile lawsuits against Russian bloggers.

In November, blogger Oleg Kozyrev launched a trade union for bloggers, citing the need for an organization to protect the rights and freedoms of the authors of online content.

Numerous Russian bloggers have been arrested and jailed under charges of extremism, inciting hatred, or instigating social discord. Most recently, 22-year old Ivan Peregorodiev was arrested in the southern city of Saratov in December and charged with disseminating false information related to an act of terrorism after he discussed rumors on his blog that victims of swine flu actually had pneumonic plague.

Kozyrev intends for the union to bring together Russian-language bloggers in an assertion of their rights and freedoms. That aside, he says, it will remain politically independent.

The manifesto enumerates seven “freedoms of bloggers” – of speech, entrepreneurial activity, dissemination of information, authorship, creative self-expression, preservation of content, and assembly. The union would work to defend all bloggers, including creators of podcasts, online videos, and photo galleries, from violations of these freedoms.

The first action of the trade union was to demand the release of jailed journalist and blogger Irek Murtazin.

Kozyrev said that the union will keep track of lawsuits against bloggers and have a database of the development of events. He additionally intends to track legislative initiatives that would have an effect on bloggers, to maintain an archive of correspondence with social and political organizations, and to set up contacts with the media.

The creation of the trade union follows the sentencing of Tartar oppositionist Irek Murtazin, former press secretary of Tartar President Mintimer Shaimiev, to twenty-one months in jail on charges of slander and “violation of the sanctity of private life.” Shaymiev says that Murtazin had disseminated information that he knew to be false, undermining Shaimiev’s reputation and disclosing personal secrets. In particular, Murtazin posted on his blog on September 12 that Shaimiev had unexpectedly died in Turkey.

In a statement to RFE/RL, Murtazin said that the trial was a “theater of the absurd” and that he plans to appeal the verdict. He also said that the decision sets a dangerous precedent for anyone with “any word of criticism” against a Russian leader.

A number of recent arrests of bloggers and have brought internet freedom in Russia into serious doubt. LiveJournal users in one southern Russian region found themselves without access to the website in June after courts ordered an opposition blog to stop publishing. Another blogger was arrested for lewd descriptions of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

As the Kasparov.ru online newspaper reports, internet providers in the region were ordered to limit user access to the IP address used by the “Revinform” online news agency.  When two providers complied, some 63% of the republic’s residents lost access to all blogging content on LiveJournal.  Authorities were apparently unaware that the shut-down, which affected thousands of bloggers, would be so wide-reaching.

The order to close the news blog came after a court in the capital of Ufa deemed the site to be extremist.  The case was launched against the blog after it reprinted articles from the Maydan newspaper documenting corruption among regional officials.

The online newspaper’s editorial office said it considers the court decision unlawful and politically motivated, and has since released a mirror website for its content.

Revinform publishes both original news content and reprinted material dedicated to local news in Bashkortostan.  The site is run by the “Revinform” News Agency, which describes itself as “news from Bashkiria without censorship.”  According to an unnamed source, the news agency is controlled by two of Bashkortostan’s opposition leaders, Ramil Bignov and Robert Zagreyev.

Bashkortostan has a history of blocking internet access to opposition websites, and a similar court order was used against the Ufa Gubernskaya (Ufa Gub) opposition portal in March of this year.  At the request of prosecutors, all 11 of the region’s internet providers cut access to both Ufa Gubernskaya and a number of other independent news sites identified by officials as “extremist.”

The hubbub over net-speak—purposeful misspellings and emoticons combining into what Russians call “Olbanian” (a made-up language in itself a misspelling of Albanian)–comes as Russia’s lower house, the State Duma, is preparing draft legislation to regulate all aspects of the Internet.  One part of the law intends to control the language used by Russians to communicate online, according to Yelena Zelinskaya, the deputy-chairwoman of the Public Chamber Commission on Preserving Cultural Heritage.

“There is very much good on the Internet, this is practically common sense,” she said.  “But there are things that have a destructive effect on the younger generation.  A child can’t distinguish between what is grammatically correct and incorrect.  What do we do?  Tear off the hands of those who use slang?  Or rip out tongues?  Of course not.  The problem can only be solved with education.  For instance, we are proposing a whole series of efforts to raise literacy.  First of all, we need to forbid anonymity on the Net: reduce the amount of sites where people act using nicknames [usernames] instead of their real names.  And when users will stop hiding behind masks, their treatment of the written word will improve, because everyone knows that making mistakes is improper.”

Lawmakers have proposed various methods of battling slang in the past.  Actor Nikolai Gubenko, the last Minister of Culture of the USSR and now a Moscow City representative, suggested in 2005 that people who “unreasonably use jargon and slang expressions” on the Internet be treated as hooligans.  Gubenko urged that violators be fined from 500-1000 rubles, or arrested for 15 days.  In the end, the former minister’s colleagues decided to respectfully disagree, and block the proposal.

Independent experts, meanwhile, downplayed the effect of web slang on the Russian language, and argued that common grammar mistakes were much more pernicious.

“First of all, this only encompasses a very small audience,” said Marina Koroleva, author of “Let’s Speak Russian,” and the host of a radio show of the same name.  “Secondly, this is a language game, where the players are more likely adults than teenagers.  If a child sees the word “krasavcheg” [a misspelling of “beaut” or “handsome one”] by accident, of course this will present some sort of threat to his literacy, but not a a comprehensive one.  A much greater danger is the complete misuse of grammar in the Internet, which no one controls.”

Koroleva adds that there is no way to have leverage over Internet-users.  “And this is frightening, because poor grammar enters the subconscious,” she said.  “Even, excuse me, I come into situations, where I start to doubt spelling simply because I spend too much time in blogs.”

According to the Russian Ministry of Education, youngsters are more and more frequently using misspelled “Olbanian” web-speak in their essays.

Emoticon smilies and acronyms like LOL are cropping up next to humorous misspellings of common words popularized online, like “hello,” (preved) “something,” (chenit) and “somehow” (kaknit).

Net-speak has also become embedded into the language of business.  The General Director of one oil company even made the order to fine employees for using “Olbanian,” after he noticed its use in an outgoing business letter.

In 2007, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev had a different take on the web language.  The web-savvy Medvedev, who now runs both a text and video-blog, was a First Deputy Prime Minister at the time.  During a conference on the Internet, Medvedev commented that controlling the use of Olbanian in the country was impossible but said that it needed to be considered closely.  “You may like it, you may not like it,” Medvedev said, “someone could say that it’s a change in the norms and rules of the Russian language.  But this is a current language environment, which, by the way, is nonetheless based on the Russian language.”

Aksana Panova, owner and editor of the online news agency, said the first extremist text was left as a comment on the forum in 2008.  Responding to a news article titled “On April 20th, skinheads will mark Hitler’s birthday with mass attacks on foreigners,” an unknown user called for the death of government leaders and wrote a series of racist slurs.  Despite the fact that moderators quickly removed the comment, the local office of Roskomsvyaznadzor had already noticed it and issued a warning.

After that, similar comments began popping up daily on the forum.  “We are certain that this was a planned campaign,” Panova said.  “At first, we removed these comments, which had the same identical text, but in the end it was noticed, and we received a second warning.”

The Ura.ru editorial office then turned for help to law enforcement authorities in every region where it has correspondents.  This, however, merely led to an inspection from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and local police, who scoured the website’s materials for extremism.  The authors of the offending comments have yet to be found, although Ura.ru provided with investigators with the user’s IP addresses, which should lead directly to the perpetrators.

“Formally, we now have the right to turn to court with a claim to close the media outlet,” said Yevgeny Strelyakin, press-secretary of Roskomsvyaznadzor.  “But this doesn’t happen automatically.  We will see how they react, we’ll understand if this is a one-time problem or the publication’s policy.  After all, these types of comments need to be moderated and kept track of on a timely basis.”

According to the Russian Union of Journalists, authorities have accused two other web-publications on charges of extremism in the same manner.  The Altai-based Bankfax agency and the Khakkasia-based Novy Fokus web-magazine were each ultimately fined 20 thousand rubles ($600 or €450).

The proposal seems to mimic an idea expressed by Russia’s Minister of Communication, Igor Schegolev.  Schegolev had earlier spoken about the need to protect the Russian share of the internet (called the Runet for websites ending in .ru), from external threats.  The ministry is currently working on creating a Cyrillic alphabet alternative to the Latin-based domain name system, and the controls could feasibly go hand-in-hand.

The proposal on “providing access to foreign Internet resources through a funnel,” appeared in a report written by Makarov titled “Proposals for developing the information society.”  As of yet, Makarov says he hasn’t discussed the project “with the people who make the decisions on these issues in Russia.”

The computer expert firmly believes that an information funnel will not necessarily be used to restrict Internet freedoms.  “International rules and standards must be worked out to attribute sources that are dangerous to society, and control of the national network must be established based on a dialogue between the government and the online community,” Makarov explained.

Kremlin critics are concerned that such a move would give the government undue power over the internet, which has remained relatively free even as authorities have clamped down on independent print and broadcast media.

The idea harkens to the example of China, which controls online information flows with a wide-scale funneling network.  The system, known as the Golden Shield Project and the Great Firewall of China (Read a detailed account from The Atlantic) controls the flow of information in and out of China, and has been used to block independent international news websites as well as information about dissidence in the country.

Nurgaliev called on the Ministry of Justice, the Federal Security Service (FBS) and the Interior Ministry to lobby for such a law “with all the resulting legal consequences for owners of subversive sites.”

Speaking at the first session of a government committee on preventative measures against crime, Nurgaliev said it was necessary “to protect the youth from xenophobia, extremist attitudes, legal nihilism and the criminal subculture.” He said it was becoming necessary to criminalize the dissemination of certain information online, including terrorist ideas, advice on how to make bombs and other illegal activities. “Here is where the responsibility of mass-media outlets is great, particularly those oriented toward the youth,” he continued.

Nurgaliev’s proposal is the latest suggestion by lawmakers and law enforcement officials to regulate the internet. In February 2008, Federation Council Senator Vladimir Slutsker proposed registering any website with more than 1000 daily visitors as a mass-media outlet. In March, the Prosecutor-General’s office asked lawmakers to hold internet providers responsible for the content they host. In April, the Public Chamber, an advisory body to the Parliament, backed proposed restrictions to the web.

It is worth noting that in 2004, Russia’s Deputy Minister of IT and Communications, Dmitri Milovantsev, adamantly spoke against classifying websites as mass-media outlets. “Personal websites in the internet can be compared with, for instance, a school’s wall newspaper [(where students are given a poster to decorate and hang in the school-building)].”

“So it turns out the wall newspaper must be included as a mass-media outlet?” Milovantsev said.

As of today, Milovantsev is no longer around to speak out for internet freedom. The Deputy Minister tendered his resignation in June 2008.

The request asked that the website be closed under the “law on extremist activities.” The division that initiated the request, called department “K,” is responsible for prosecuting crimes in high technology. The extremist speech they claim to have found lies in user commentary left on the weekly newspaper’s online forum. An anonymous reader allegedly used harsh language and called for violence against regional leadership, including Valery Krepostnov, а senior leader of the Kirov oblast government.

The newspaper’s editor, Sergei Bachinin, told the Regnum Information Agency that the move was an obvious provocation. Prior to this instance, the editors had always obliged requests from officers of the law to remove unlawful materials from the site. This time, instead of contacting the website’s staff to remove the comment in question, the militsiya apparently decided to close down the entire site. As of yet, a formal explanation has not been given to the Vyatsky Nabludatel’s editorial offices.

The head of the Interior Ministry’s press service, Sergei Barantsev, said that the decision was not without precedent. According to Barantsev, seven websites were shut down at the request of law enforcement in 2007.

One of those sites, an online fan-club for supporter’s of Kirov’s Rodina hockey team, was not able to come back online, despite a loud public protest against the closure. Eventually, the site moved to a server that was out of the militsiya’s jurisdiction. According to Bachinin, the Vyatsky Nablyudatel will do the same, and will switch to an international web provider in the near future. He added that the site should be back online in a matter of days.