Great piece in this week’s Context, the weekly arts and ideas section of The Moscow Times, about the first history yet written about the Russian web. Feeling the Elephant (Oshchupyvaya Slona), by writer, journalist, and core member of Russia’s online literati Sergei Kuznetsov, was published late last year and has already engendered a small storm of controversy for alleged omissions, mischaracterizations and the like. But Kuznetsov says he never set out to write a “proper” history, simply an insider’s account – bias, warp and all – of the literary web he played a central role in creating. This lack of propriety is not altogether unfitting since there’s much in Russia’s neck of the web that, according to our stricter standards, isn’t at all proper, and this goes beyond mail order brides.. Intellectual property is only a fledgling idea there, and you can easily find practically any text online, from Pushkin to Pelevin, including fresh-off-the-press, protected material. The most popular of these literary indexes is Maxim Moshkov’s Lib.ru.
This loose, free-wheeling web culture has been both a boon and a curse to Russia’s writers and readers. On the one hand, it is easy and free to publish, and likewise easy and free to read. But with the exception of the most popular authors – the churners out of mysteries and bodice rippers – it’s damn hard to make a living writing in Russia (much harder than in the West, which is tough enough), and all this free literary trafficking, while rousing and diverse, bitterly emphasizes the underlying poverty. This begs the question, just as relevant here as anywhere else.. how can writers continue to make the web richer without becoming impoverished themselves?
(photo: Vladimir Filonov / Moscow Times)