In September of last year, a the Russian human rights organization “Gulag” published a lengthy treatise on efforts of Vladmir Putin’s secret police to seize control of the Internet by using a cadre of “brigadniki” thugs to harrass anyone who dared to express opinions critical of the Kremlin. The lead of the piece, Anna Polyanskaya, was formerly on the staff of Russian Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova, who was murdered in November 1998 for speaking out against the rise of dictatorship in Russia. She belongs in the line of heroic Russian women that includes Anna Politkovskaya and has been previously described on Publius Pundit. The following are some of the text’s most fascinating passages (read the entire text here). It’s worth mentioning that a contributer to the forum of the Russian daily newspaper Yezhedevny Zhurnal recently posted a list of screen names used by some of the “brigadniki” described in the article as servants of the Kremlin who attack Internet critics; one of those screen names is “ENOT” (in Russian “EHOT”) a name that pops up from time to time to attack the posts about Russia on this blog. It’s also worth mentioning that the article confirms that Public Enemy #1 for the “brigadniki” was from the start Politkovskaya, clearly giving the lie Vladimir Putin’s statement that she was viewed by Russians as an insigificance so that the Kremlin would not have bothered to liquidate her.

Political forums on the Internet are a relatively new pastime for Russians, a virtual world-wide kitchen where public opinion is brewed. More and more often, in various printed and online publications, articles are appearing that examine contributions to these forums as a way of monitoring Russian public opinion. The primary tone of these articles is generally one of complete surprise: ???????What is going on with the Russian educated class and intellectuals???????? After all, it is surely these people who are the main users of the Internet and the ones most interested in politics and social trends. But what one finds on Russian web-forums is an orgy of hatred, xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, violent propaganda, amoral barbarism and raving. A normal person, after reading forums like these, becomes ill. ???????With growing speed, the country is falling into insanity???????; ???????the Russian educated class has become bestial??????? ???????? this is the general tone of commentaries on ???????Radio Svoboda???????, ???????Moskovskiye Novosti???????, the web publication ???????Gazeta.ru???????, and various mass media in the West.

A number of institutes for political studies in the West have created offices and political forums for researching the so-called RuNet (the Russian portion of the Internet), wherein specialists judge the mood of the intellectual elite in Russia. Following is just one very typical quote from the site of the Israeli research group MAOF:

???????The commentaries of average Russians are striking in the ferocious unanimity of their readers. One gets the sense that America has attacked not just innocent Arabs, but Russia itself. In their postings on the forum, Internet users show exactly the same sort of wild malice as their Islamic protectorates. And what is most interesting, they do not need any sort of Imam. They are so consumed with spite that it can be hard for me, after only 12 years away from Russia, to tell whether they are even using Russian to express themselves.???????

The majority of researchers who quote web-forum postings from the RuNet come to the same conclusion, that in most cases the people posting on these forums fully and completely support the leadership of the government, and that Russian intellectuals and youth have suddenly and simultaneously become aggressive thugs. But we will here try to rehabilitate the reputation of the thinking portion of Russia that expresses itself on the Internet.

For a fairly long time we have had our doubts about whether Russian public opinion has been so well-represented on RuNet forums. Are these really just the ???????commentaries of average Russians??????? that all these researchers find so ???????striking in the ferocious unanimity of their readers????????

The phenomenon we are here trying to investigate is by no means an ideological or spiritual community of post-Soviet people, tied together by common views, nor the aggressions of isolated anonymous boors on the Russian Internet. In our view, this is a qualitatively different phenomenon ???????? the appearance on RuNet forums of organized and fairly professional ???????Brigades???????, composed of ideologically and methodologically identical personalities, who ???????work??????? to form the public opinion desired by the authorities, in practically every single one of the popular political/social web-forms having even a few hundred viewers a day.

We have tried to systematically characterize the activities of this ???????Brigade???????, which can now be found on all liberal and pro-democracy open forums of the RuNet and in various online publications read by the educated classes. Communist, nationalist, pro-fascist and mass media sites were not considered in our study.

Round-the-clock presence on forums

At least one of the uniform members of the brigade can be found ???????online??????? at all times, always ready to repulse any ???????attack??????? by a liberal. During a 24-hour period, there is not a single hour when one can carry on a discussion in a forum without these ???????curators??????? being present. In any discussion, someone from the ???????Brigade??????? will invariably muscle in. The Brigade in fact stands guard day and night on all meaningful forums, periodically wandering from forum to forum with the same set of materials and advertisements.

Plasticity of ideology, always coinciding with the government

The brigade invariably and fervently propagates a fairly eclectic system of viewpoints and values, corresponding exactly to the very latest directions of government PR, including the ideology and policies of the Russian leadership. Any change in government instructions is immediately followed by sharp changes in the views of all members of the ???????Brigade???????. In cases where government propaganda for some reason has to suddenly change course regarding, for example, the USA, or Mayor Luzhkov, the very same brigade member will permanently ???????forget??????? one or another individual, who until recently was either ???????worshiped??????? or conversely ???????fire-branded???????, and begin to propagandize about something that only yesterday was hated, or vice-versa. Praises are sung as zealously as slanders were the day before. All of this is done without the slightest embarrassment or care for their personal reputations.

One of the more recent Ä2003Å examples was in discussions of the issues surrounding the Kuril Islands Äannexed by Russia at the end of WW-II, but are still claimed by JapanÅ. If in 2000 all members of the Brigade sang in a single voice: ???????Not one inch of our native land to the damned Japanese???????, then in 2003, after the completion of negotiations between Putin and the Japanese leadership, the very same authors, under the same nicknames, were suddenly entirely open to the possibility of the islands changing hands in exchange for money or large-scale Japanese investments, and with great satisfaction would count off the many benefits of such a trade.

Conversely, during the time when a bill on the storage of nuclear waste in Russia was working its way through the Russian Duma, members of the Brigade passionately tried to persuade forum readers of the ???????definite usefulness, profitability and security??????? of turning Russia into the world????????s nuclear cesspool. Individuals working on this propaganda projected themselves as ???????private citizens and patriotically-spirited emigrants???????, but were clearly using information from the press service of the Ministry of Atomic Energy (MinAtom).

Boundless loyalty to Putin and his circle

Members of the web-brigade, with nicknames that are ???????twisted??????? and unknown to the forum, always make a point of expressing their immeasurable affection for Putin. They are prepared to destroy anyone who expresses even the slightest doubt about the merits of the Russian President. For the slightest criticism of Vladimir Vladimirovych, they will threaten their opponents and their opponents???????? families with lawsuits, beatings, murder and other reprisals. The final form ???????? threats to opponents???????? families ???????? are not isolated cases, but a widespread phenomenon on all political web forums. Sometimes members of the Brigade very openly announce their intentions for being on the forum. For example:

???????Let????????s support the first President in the last 11 years who has tried to change the course of history for our long-suffering Motherland. Let????????s judge him by his deeds, and not by the gossip purveyed by the club-girl-loving mass media. Let????????s put forward some constructive proposals here, so that if (hah-hah) the KGB were to show up here, Putin would have laid out before him on his desk a file containing the ???????voice of the people????????, intelligently discussing the problems of ???????today???????? and proposing solutions for ???????tomorrow????????, rather than the cackling of a bazaar.???????

This text is interesting in its ingenuous openness, its simple and comprehensible presentation of the Brigade????????s assignment. What is curious is only that the information in the hypothetical presentation of the ???????voice of the people??????? from the forum would be ???????laid out before Putin??????? in the form of a rationalized proposal, but without any criticism, which might spoil the President????????s mood. This is reminiscent of a 1930????????s satirical epigram that went around along these lines:

???????We????????re for laughter, but we need,
Someone nicer than Shchedrin,
And those guys like Gogol,
So they????????ll let us be.???????

This rhyme could be placed as an epigraph on the Brigade????????s version of the life and times of the Russian President.

Respect and admiration for the VChK-KGB-FSB

The brigadniki are overflowing with affection and respect for the FSB and all its historical incarnations, beginning with the ChK-OGPU and so forth. All reincarnations of the ChK-KGB are called ???????neo-noble???????, ???????law-enforcement??????? and ???????civics-instructing patriotic??????? agencies, the activities of which, including the Gulag system, should be a source of pride for Russians. Any participant in an online discussion who shows insufficient respect for the VChK-FSB is denounced by the Brigade as an ???????enemy of Russia, a Russophobe, and a betrayer of the Motherland.??????? The Brigade constantly underscores the ???????honor, heroism and impartiality??????? of the Chekisti, the ???????selflessness and devotion of their service to the state and Motherland???????, and their ???????incorruptibility???????, in contrast to other government workers. The Brigade will make declarations like the following:

???????The Russian special services have always existed, just as they existed, currently exist and always will exist in the countries of the West.??????? Or this: ???????The FSB is a ???????special service???????? just like the FBI in the U.S., the MOSSAD in Israel or MI-6 in Great Britain,??????? etc.

Condemnation of the actions of the KGB-FSB by any participant of a discussion group excites genuinely strong feelings from all members of the brigade. For instance, the following was directed at a reader, who expressed less than sufficient respect toward the KGB-FSB (we request the reader excuse the language, although it is presented as it was in the original):

???????EVERY MAGGOT DREAMS OF BECOMING A LOUSE. EVERY MAGGOT ON A FORUM DREAMS OF BEING NOTICED BY THE KGB. He cries out ,he wriggles and prays: ???????Notice me — I????????m the very biggest maggot!??????? But the KGB sets you aside with its instruments; it definitely is NOT INTERESTED in maggots. Grow up to the size of a louse, a mongrel, and maybe they????????ll notice you.???????

The Brigade has lately shown a tendency to separate the FSB from all its previous incarnations and renamings, and to present the organization not as the direct successor of the VChK-OGPU-NKVD, etc., (as it is presented in all of its official symbols), but as some sort of ???????self-born Aphrodite???????, supposedly appearing only yesterday, literally out of thin air.

The key word which will invariably drive the brigadniki from their hiding places and force them to reveal their true colors is ???????lustration???????.* ÄTN: Historically the term for various ancient Greek and Roman purification rituals. In the period after the fall of the European Communist states in 1989????????1991, the term came to refer to the policy of limiting participation of former communists, and especially informants of the communist secret police, in the successor governments, or even in civil service positions.Å Not a single member of the Brigade can for even one second comport himself to the idea of a peaceful, legal limit on the choices of profession available to former Party bosses and KGB officers. Usually, after even the most peaceful and non-accusatory mention of the word ???????lustration???????, the brigade will cry out in a choir about ???????bloody repressions by democratic murderers??????? and ???????witch hunts???????, after which they will collapse into a collective hysteria of obscenities.

Ideological enemies of the Brigade

The main enemies of the Brigade are democrats (???????trashocrats???????), liberal westerners, Chechens, Europeans, Americans, Jews??????? ÄTN: ellipses in originalÅ Objects of special hatred include the Russian liberal intelligentsia, independent journalists, members of the human rights movement, and certain individuals, including S. Kovalev, E. Bonner, A. Babitskiy, A. Politkovskaya, G. Pas????????ko, V. Shenderovich, V. Novodvorskaya and others who are famous for their criticism of the current authorities. The brigadniki always favor limiting freedom of speech in the name of ???????higher interests of the State???????, and introducing strict censorship, right up to the arresting of intellectuals, human rights workers and journalists who are not of the right opinions. The Brigade calls the journalist and ecologist Grigoriy Pas????????ko a ???????spy and betrayer of the Motherland???????. By contrast, in the case of Yuri Budanov ÄTN: the only Russian military officer ever convicted by a Russian court for war crimes in ChechnyaÅ , the Brigade shows the highest level of sympathy and even approval. Budanov is presented as either an innocent victim (of the war, his wounds, a nervous breakdown, a sell-out by generals, liberal journalists, corrupt justice, etc.), or as a ???????genuine patriot???????, ???????true Russian officer???????, ???????loyal son of the Fatherland??????? and even ???????the pride and hero of Russia???????.

Paradoxically, the Brigade also views as enemies many of the liberal authors of the articles they discuss on the forums. In other words, members of the Brigade, presenting themselves as honest and private citizens, troll around on and occupy forums they don????????t like, round the clock, for years, discussing authors they hate. And yet another great paradox: the editors take no actions against people who run down their own authors, but take decisive action against the opponents of those people, who support their liberal journalists.

For example, in a readers???????? discussion of a memoir by Viktor Shenderovich in the journal ???????Moskovskiye Novosti???????, the site administrator (under obvious pressure by the forum????????s Brigade) deleted several remarks about the article, but left the positings of brigadniki claiming that the article????????s author ???????has licked out Gusinskiy????????s ass, and now is giving Berezovskiy oral sex???????.

Individual work on opponents

As soon as an opposition-minded liberal arrives on a forum, expressing a position that makes them a clear ???????ideological enemy???????, he is immediately cornered and subjected to ???????active measures??????? by the unified web-brigade. Without provocation, the opponent is piled on with abuse or vicious ???????arguments??????? of the sort that the average person cannot adequately react to. As a result, the liberal either answers sharply, causing a scandal and getting himself labeled a ???????boor??????? by the rest of the brigade, or else he starts to make arguments against the obvious absurdities, to which his opponents pay no attention, but simply ridicule him and put forth other similar arguments. This sort of action goes exactly according to the scenario described in the famous novel by Shukshin, ???????Slashed!???????

The Brigade will always and invariably try to hound collectively any stubborn liberal on the forum, for example by having one member of the brigade write about the ideological inaccuracies and mistakes of the novice, while a second swears obscenities at the opponent, a third accuses the liberal of being crazy, a forth threatens him with reprisals and murder, etc. Then a fifth member will write complaints to the site administrator about any sharp counter-attack by the injured party, absolutely ignoring that this was simply an emotional lapse in reaction to a barrage of collective hounding. One gets the impression that the aim of the Brigade is to drive out any novice-liberal, having beaten out of him any enthusiasm for posting on the forum. If the liberal stubbornly refuses to leave, a specific arsenal of means in used against him, right up to collective complaints to the site administrator by all members of the brigade, or even backstage pressure on the administrator, with the aim of getting the opponent banned from the forum. During these periods, massive virus attacks may appear on the computer of the persistent liberal.

Accusations that opponents are working for ???????enemies???????

In cases where opponents of the Brigade use forums to criticize Putin, discuss the suppression of free speech and democracy in Russia, call for an end to the war in Chechnya or show disloyalty to the agencies of state security, the brigade immediately begins to accuse them of taking money from B. Berezovskiy, the CIA, MOSSAD, Saudi Arabia, Zionists, Masons, ÄChechen rebel spokesmanÅ Movlada Udugov, etc. The brigadniki present the issue as being that any critic of the FSB or Russian policy in Chechnya is an enemy of the State, a Russophobe, and therefore his only reason for participating in political discussions is to earn a salary from the enemy. A variant is to try and smear the opponent with uniformly angry invectives about ???????emigrant-traitors of the Motherland, lecturing from abroad true Russian patriots for dirty money???????.

By this logic, all of humanity has been so overcome by love for the VChK-FSB and Putin????????s regime that extinguishing this powerful feeling could only be done by a huge amount of money. Logic, however, is rare in the postings of Brigade members. More likely, the brigadniki????????s obsessive accusations about opponents taking money for being on the Internet says more about their own reasons and motives for being there, among an intelligent class of people that is alien and foreign to them, on liberal forums they find loathsome.

Frequent changes of pseudonyms (nicknames)

Brigadniki tend to change their pseudo/nicknames frequently. One and the same author will often write on a forum under a variety of pseudonyms, sometimes imitating a dialogue with himself, giving support to himself and showing the ???????massiveness??????? of support for his point of view. When changing nicknames, the author will take on the name of a different person, sometimes even a person of a different sex, forgetting that he still has exactly the same patterns of expression, phraseology, level of Russian language, ideological positions and arguments. Because of their low level of culture and tendency to use specific verbal clich????s, it is not hard to pick out several nicknames belonging to a single brigadnik author.

Informational noise and fraudulent use of nicknames

On unmoderated forums the Brigade may stifle sharp political discussions that are undesirable for the authorities through the use of enormous volumes of meaningless messages on different themes — what has come to be called a ???????flood???????. Often these texts are pornographic or anti-Semitic in nature, and are repeated dozens or even hundreds of times in a row. Sometimes the brigade will use the name and address of an opponent with a liberal reputation to write a massive series of abusive or obscene postings. It is worth noting that this method is practically never used against the Brigade itself — in other words, the liberal-opponents do not consider themselves capable of stealing other people????????s names and addresses.

Political spectrum of the Brigade ???????? ???????Principle of the common crest???????

Permanent members of the Brigade of any popular web-forum may present themselves as followers of one or another party or movement, from anywhere on the Russian political spectrum, except the genuinely liberal part. On every forum there is always a nationalist-anti-Semite, a Communist, a representative of ???????United Russia??????? (Yedinaya Rossiya), and several individuals claiming they voted for Yavlinskiy, but were disappointed because of his insufficient loyalty to Putin. Among the others on the forum, there will always be someone with extremely leftist views, passionately idealizing the West, the U.S., and capitalism, but at the same time never criticizing Putin and his regime, which is somewhat illogical for the typical ???????lefty???????.

Views of members of the Brigade will supposedly diverge on unimportant tactical issues, but they are unwaveringly united on the key and basic issues: absolute loyalty to Putin and the FSB; the ???????flowering??????? of Russia under their leadership; the harmfulness of democracy advocates and the period of perestroika; the necessity of continuing the Chechen war without negotiations, to the point of shooting the last Chechen; hatred of human rights workers, freedom of speech, and democratic/liberal values. We call this political positioning of the Brigade the ???????principle of the common crest.???????

Criminal means

Squabbles, provocations, foul abuse ???????? all these are part of the normal life on the Web for members of the Brigade. They have special methods for dealing with women of opposing views who dare to argue with the postings of the brigadniki. In this case they throw out countless names of body parts and sex organs, point to the opponent????????s lack of sex partners, to her monstrosity, old age, obesity, being a prostitute, etc. Here, for example, is a typical and relatively inoffensive remark:

???????The GB ???????? this is State Security. It????????s a noble mission. Security is always very good. To live in a state of danger is bad – with this, one cannot argue. And to look after the security of the State is an entirely good and very important and necessary mission. And if someone from this ???????GB??????? were to wind up between someone????????s legs because they wouldn????????t shut up, it would serve them right. Too bad they wouldn????????t kill her. That species doesn????????t even worry about whether they look responsible. Obviously, for such repulsive behavior the GB takes reprisals on them. They should take more. You, Anastasia, are a dinosaur. And you should go extinct.???????

And here is another typical appearance by a member of the Brigade:

???????You, you little retard — are you having an orgasm right in front of the monitor, or what? You can????????t do it any other way, can you? Haven????????t got a man? But then who do you need, you fool. You just prattle away from morning to night. Some sort of little companionship for you. You lick up your own poison (or more exactly, your dissatisfaction). Go get yourself a man and get jerked off like you should, you????????ll feel better and it will broaden you mind, although the last is doubtful.???????

And so on, and so forth, dozens and hundreds of similar postings under various nicknames. Oddly, after about two weeks of filling up the forum with similar postings, the majority of which we cannot quote here for reasons of decency, this group of authors, having conspired to hound their female opponent, will usually write a collective letter to the site administrator complaining about how they, self-proclaimed ???????intelligent regular readers??????? of the site, were viciously badgered by exactly the same female participant of the discussion who was the object of these types postings.

Most of the actual female participants of a discussion are not able to hold up for long under such a collective onslaught by the Brigade, and they eventually quit the discussion.

Intentional diversion of pointed discussions

Members of the brigade are well-versed in the use of simple techniques used by thieves (???????look at the bird!???????) to distract the attention of the ???????objective??????? with the aim of subsequently robbing him (in the current case, diverting the discussion into the wilderness). People who are not familiar with the criminal world easily fall for this trick, to the great joy of the entire Brigade. Among other members of the discussion — other than the brigadniki — conduct of this sort is practically never encountered.

The well-informed web-brigade

Before all else, the Brigade has the most remarkable ability to instantly find quotes from old postings of opponents on forums, even postings a year and a half old, sometimes no longer even in the archives of the site. Many brigadniki strive also to know as much as possible about the personal information of their opponents. With this objective they regularly conduct ???????intelligence interrogations??????? of critically-inclined opponents, in the course of which they ask a wide range of questions about their family, the college they graduated from, their work, the region in which they live, favorite places and friends. Somehow, one????????s casual ???????conversation partner??????? from the Brigade is able to quickly identify the country and city from which one is writing, even on those sites where it is not possible to see one????????s IP-code.

Teamwork

Yet another characteristic of the uniform Brigade type is their tendency to work as a team. They unwaveringly support each other in discussions, ask each other leading questions, put fine points on each other????????s answers, and even pretend not to know each other. If an opponent starts to be hounded, this hounding invariably becomes a team effort, involving all of the three to twenty nicknames that invariably are present on any political forum 24 hours a day. A favorite method of the Brigade is to accuse their opponents of being insane. This accusation always becomes a group effort, with each of the nickname-personalities of the Putin-loving Brigade throwing out one or another short remark: ???????democratic-schizophrenic??????? (???????demshiz???????) paranoid schizophrenic, ???????clinical????????, persecution complex, clearly sick, loony bin????????s computer, parole day at the psych ward, take your tranquilizer???????, etc, etc. ÄTN: “demzhiz” is an interesting term of abuse, apparently with origins in Soviet “psychology.” It is not, of course, a term recognized by psychologists outside of Russia and, after some discussion, the Russian version of Wikipedia refused to list it. For Russian speakers an excellent, almost clinical — though tellingly sympathetic — summary of its meaning and implications can be found on the Russian Darkus blog.Å

Appealing to the Administration

After all the above-mentioned methods for dealing with an opponent are exhausted, the Brigade has in its arsenal an extreme measure: appealing to the site administrator. Most often, the brigadniki simply write mass collective complaints about their opponents to the editors, site administrators, or the electronic ???????complaints book???????, demanding that one or another posting or whole discussion thread they don????????t like be removed, or calling for the banning of individuals they find problematic. The Brigade????????s complaints on various sites coincide word-for-word. For example, complaints from Brigade members to both the administrator of the site MN and the Web Master of civitas.ru, supposedly written by absolutely all kinds of people, all contained the same exact words: ???????This sweet couple has hounded and driven from the forum all its regular participants.???????

Destruction of inconvenient forums

Sometimes a cleansing is orchestrated of whole sections of a forum in which one of the members of the Brigade has allowed a clear ???????leak??????? or exposure of too much (or simply untimely) information related to the intelligence services. Examples of this sort of activity are too widespread to be considered mere accidental coincidences.

The site vesti.ru, which hosted fairly pointed discussions of current Russian issues, was closed down soon after a discussion began in which a number of readers accused the FSB of involvement in explosions in Dagestan. The site has since been turned over to a government television channel. On the site of the magazine ???????Moskovskiye Novosti???????, readers who had presented themselves as critics of Putin and the FSB were suddenly and without any explanation banned from all discussions, despite their having broken none of the site????????s rules of conduct. All the postings of this group of readers, going back a year and a half, were erased by the site administrator.

When searching on the word ???????lustration??????? Äsee prior noteÅ the search system Rambler.ru had for some time given a reference to a forum in the online journal Yezhednevniy Zhurnal (ej.ru) devoted to discussing the necessity of lustrating former chekists in Russia. Shortly after that forum????????s postings began appearing on another Russian political forum, with a link to a post by a reader of ej.ru, all the archives of discussions on Yezhednevniy Zhurnal, including the postings about lustration, were destroyed, and the forum ej.ru itself underwent a complete change of design. On many forums of the RuNet, a painstaking and well-planned change of administrators is taking place, in which independent specialists are being replaced by individuals who are fully controlled by the government and will faithfully execute any order.

Advancers of the ???????Party line????????

There are, alas, many people in Russia with anti-liberal views. But since the breakup of the USSR they have not all presented themselves as a unified entity. The above-noted peculiarities of ideology and methods of operation of the ???????Brigade??????? simply could not have formed accidentally in multiple groups of people. However, exactly these ???????brigadniki??????? now make up about 70% of regular participants on Russian language political forums. They are as identical as two droplets of water, their texts coincide word for word on different forums, and they clearly use one and the same information base of articles and other materials expressing the current points of view of the authorities. These individuals are constantly present on article-comment forums belonging to such well-known liberal publications as ???????Moskovskiye Novosti???????, ???????Novaya Gazeta???????, ???????Nezavisimaya Gazeta???????, the information sites ???????Lenta.ru???????, ???????RBK.ru???????, ???????Ytro.ru???????, ???????MSK.ru???????, ???????Khartiya.ru???????, and so forth. (TN: Again, this article was first written in 2003; some of these publications have since been bought out or otherwise taken over by government-owned companies or pro-Kremlin businessmen, and are no longer distinctly ???????liberal???????.)

A new shade of rabid hatred of the U.S. began on the Russian Internet from the first day of the war in Iraq, and quickly reached an incandescence never seen before. Reading the forums, it sometimes seemed that the U.S. was not liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein, but at a minimum had actually launched an attack on Russia and was marching on the Kremlin. A multitude of brigadniki on dozens of formus so rejoiced each time an American soldier was killed in Iraq, that it seemed the soldier????????s death was literally their personal achievement. However, the entire bonfire of passion, hatred and anti-American gloating on the Internet once again fell silent in a single day, as if following a conductor????????s baton, immediately after Putin announced that Russia was not opposed to the victory of the coalition forces in Iraq.

Any sociologist can confirm that true public opinion does not undergo such sharp metamorphoses, but always has more inertia, and cannot change altogether, everywhere, in a single day. It is not, however, within the scope of our project to draw global conclusions about radical changes on the Internet which have taken place over the last few years Äbefore 2003Å. We have here tried only to summarize a few of the characteristic regularities.

???????Disinformation and Kompromat???????

Along with the thief-like techniques described in the first part of this article, used to distract attention and lead political discussions into the wilderness, the Brigade also regularly throws targeted disinformation and kompromat into forums. Refuting such information can be difficult, and the old adage, ???????Keep lying, and eventually something will stick??????? works here as well as anywhere.

Clearly, it is important for the Brigade that false claims be a part of every discussion, and that those claims become part of the new myths that influence public opinion. Why in the world does the Brigade so constantly and brazenly repeat lies that have already been refuted? Its members themselves openly admit (and we quote):

???????Graffiti is read by many more people than write it. And if I write over and over again that someone is a pig, eventually that someone will oink.???????

One might suppose the existence of a certain type of person who is endowed with ???????the gift of utter shamelessness???????, but strangely enough, there are generally at least five participants of this type in any discussion, and on the most popular Russian political forums there may be a dozen. All of their false claims, which identically falsify events and history, are repeated by them every day and sometimes word for word in dozens and hundreds of forums.

Technical Methods of Pressure

One of the most commonly used methods for putting pressure on stubborn opponents (especially those who make note of the possible presence of a tight-knit Brigade on the forum) is to send them junk email containing viruses and Trojan horses. In our archive we have dozens of cases in which people of liberal viewpoints have reported that after posting messages opposing the ideological values of the Putin regime they have suddenly suffered massive virus attacks that practically destroyed their computer programs and blocked their access to the Internet.

Here, for example is a report from one visitor to the forum Civitas.ru:

Immediately after my short participation in a forum on Civitas.ru about the necessity of lustrating the FSB, a series of strong virus attacks penetrated all the defense systems of my computer and kept me from getting on the Internet for several days. Assuming that this was a coincidence, I returned to the same discussion forum on this topic that is so unpleasant for the FSB. That same day the following post appeared on the forum:

???????You again! Veronika is back. I would have thought you would understand by now, Nikush. It became clear for everyone else a long time ago — only for you is it still unclear. Fine. Then we????????ll continue working. But one quick question for you, Veronika. You write about the KGB that they are, supposedly, beasts, and then you write that you live in Russia. If all of this is true, and I for example am a major in the FSB, doesn????????t this scare you? Wouldn????????t you rather be known as a French Jane????????

Immediately after this remark was posted, the massive virus attack on my computer returned. Clearly, this was a continuation of the work of the ???????FSB major???????.

Obsessive stories about themselves

Trying to add credibility to their stories, brigadniki often tell unsolicited stories about themselves, their places of residence and work, their parents, etc, and publicize their work and home phone numbers, which none of the other participants in these forums find appropriate to do. At the same time, members of the Brigade often get mixed up in the details of ???????their??????? biographies, and may know very little about their supposed profession or the country where they supposedly live. Very often, they are ????migr????s in a foreign country, or call themselves ????migr????s. In recent months, however, this trend has changed, so that many of the brigadniki now claim to be residents of remote and non-fertile areas of Russia or Siberia, where, according to their stories, ???????a massive economic, social and cultural blossoming is underway, along with an overwhelming improvement in the standard of living, under the wise leadership of the Putin administration.???????

Insightfulness of the Brigade

One of the most interesting peculiarities of the brigadniki is their ability to identify and publicize on forums not only their anonymous opponents???????? place of residence, but also their full names, biographic details, place of work, and names of their relatives. Of course, they first ask a multitude of questions about their opponent????????s country of residence, work, age, education, etc. But even when the personalities asking all these questions do not receive answers from their opponents, they somehow manage to find out this information on their own.

We once saw how, in the online remarks section of the magazine ???????Moskovskiye Novosti???????, one member of a Brigade, supposedly using only the email address and neutral nickname ???????Kutyur???????, determined and publicized the full name and place of work of one of the regular members of the discussion, a fierce supporter of Gaidar, Chubays and the SPS party. This was a couple of years ago, when the SPS was sharply criticizing Putin and his policies with respect to NTV and the war in Chechnya. The publication on the forum of the SPS supporter????????s personal information was accompanied by threats against him and his family, which forced him to quit the web forum and for a long time refrain from any sort of discussion.

Politkovskaya ???????? Object of Special Attention by the Brigade

Brigadniki are almost always present, and especially active and aggressive, at discussions of certain publications, authors and topics. Among Russian publications and authors, the leader in all categories would be articles on Chechnya by Anna Politkovskaya in the journal ???????Novaya Gazeta???????.

What happens during discussions of these articles simply defies description. It is an absolute orgy of animal hatred toward both Politkovskaya and every Chechen on the planet. Curiously, these remarks have been word-for-word identical with those posted since 2000, putting forward exactly the same ???????arguments???????, accusations and insults, using exactly the same phrasing and sentence constructions. One gets the feeling that they are being written by exactly the same people with the same impoverished imagination and vocabulary. And once again we see here the same psychological puzzle: Is it really plausible that common readers, so fiercely hating this journalist and her viewpoints, would constantly, regularly, in every edition, read her every article and write exactly the same remarks, over and over again, never lacking the time or money to pay for the expensive Internet access one finds in Russia?

In this atmosphere so thick with insults, lies and xenophobia, normal discussion becomes impossible, and people with viewpoints other than those of the ???????iron clutch??????? are pushed out of the forums. It is entirely possible that this is one of the objectives of the Brigade, with its unified, propaganda-like ideology.

Administrative Resources

At the end of Jaunary 2003, on one of the more popular sites on the RuNet ???????? the electronic version of the liberal magazine ???????Moskovskiye Novosti??????? ???????? a fairly unusual event occurred. The Brigade on this forum unexpectedly began receiving active assistance from the new administrator of the MN site. The new administrator, a person of clearly limited intellect and ethics, suddenly, in spite of the site rules, categorically refused to remove from the site multiple anti-Semitic ???????flood??????? postings and obscene abuse written by members of the pro-Putin Brigade. Moreover, when many readers requested that the magazine take measures against the foul-mouthed anti-Semites from the forum????????s Brigade, the administrator publicly answered: ???????You make me sick.??????? Then, without explaining his reasons, the administrator banned from the forum all members of the discussion who had been so presumptuous as to criticize Putin and the FSB.

The MN site administrator then took the unprecedented step (even for the RuNet) of purging the archives of the forum for the past two years. The MN site administrator was so energetic he carefully deleted only the several tens of thousands of readers???????? postings that were directed against Putin and the policies of the FSB. Once again many regular contributors to the site expressed their annoyance to the administrator. In response the administrator advised that a number of the participants in previous discussions (all of them people of liberal and democratic viewpoints, who had never broken the rules of the forum) had been banned from the site on the personal instructions of the magazine????????s editor in chief, V. Loshak.

One of the readers banned from the site had to use another computer to post his protest, having vowed to bring to light the fact of political censorship at MN. Eventually, his access to the site was reopened, but the site editor then took the unprecedented step of publicizing the IP codes of both of this person????????s computers. The publication of a user????????s IP code is quite undesirable for the user, since it makes it easier for hackers to break in, and the administrator????????s doing this represented an absolutely amoral breech of the most basic standards of professional ethics. Ironically, exactly this same administrator had only a few months before publicly explained the undesirability and danger of publicizing IP codes.

After this reader????????s departure from the forums being censored by the Brigade, the Brigade continued ???????in hot pursuit???????, locating his U.S.-based ISPs using the IP-codes of his Internet addresses, and transparently hinting they might tell his employer about his pastime of participating in discussion forums during working hours.

The site administrator????????s referring to the order of the chief editor — to ban from the site all ???????anti-Putin??????? readers and delete all their postings for the past year and a half from the archives — speaks for itself. We will note only that the ???????censored??????? readers never once broke the rules of the site, never used obscene language, etc. Moreover, the editor left in the archives all of the obscene abuse, indecencies and personal threats directed at these readers by members of the Brigade, while every last one of these reader????????s postings that were directed against Putin or the FSB were carefully deleted.

It seems completely ridiculous that the editors of MN to this day openly help drive from the site people of liberal viewpoints, most of whom defend the positions of the authors and journalists of this still fairly liberal publication, to the benefit of those participants of discussions who absolutely trash these authors, showering them with every possible insult and obscene abuse.

The Brigade????????s ???????gift of prophecy???????

As a consequence of their specifically Soviet mentality and upbringing, brigadniki often slack off and do slipshod work, allowing annoying leaks which site administrators must then fix, by erasing the leaks along with large pieces of the rest of the forum.

For example, in October 2002 several brigadniki from the MN forum, presenting themselves as ???????patriotically-minded emigrants???????, suddenly, without making any connection to the topics of the forum, launched into a campaign to discredit and expose a certain Mr. Limarev, who was completely unknown to the forum. It later turned out that Mr. Limarev ran the site ???????RusGlobus???????, which was critical of the current Russian regime.

The postings of these ???????everyday readers from various countries??????? were unusually full of private information, including details of the unheard-of Mr. Limarev????????s business and personal life, including his home address and telephone number, pseudonyms, names of his family members and bank account numbers. Two women were especially eager to expose Mr. Limarev, both of them long-time contributors to the forum, one of whom claimed to be a doctor in Ireland, the other an American real estate broker; both were passionate admirers of Putin and the FSB.

All of this brought a certain degree of confusion to the forum, inasmuch as none of the participants in the discussion could understand why the women were discussing and denouncing this unknown person, about whom so much personal information was being revealed.

The reason for this untimely ???????kompromat spill??????? became apparent two weeks later, when the magazine Moscovskiy Komsomolets ran an article by the journalist Khinshteyn ÄTN: Aleksandr Khinshteyn, also a Duma Deputy and well-known mouthpiece for the FSB; most recently involved in the purging of the leadership of the Russian Jurists Association (AYuR)Å about how the FSB had sent an agent named Sultanov to France six months before to secretly investigate the creators of an anti-KGB site named RusGlobus. Among the creators of this site was the mysterious Mr. Limarev, whose address and bank account numbers had been posted by the Brigade on the MN forum.

The premature publicizing on the Internet of materials derived from operational sources of the FSB, two weeks before their first appearance in the mass media, resulted in a local Internet scandal. Many readers asked the obvious question: Who are these people, really, who have constantly appeared on this forum as opponents, presenting themselves as well-meaning residents of various countries, if they have access to information from the bowels of the FSB even before it is known to the journalist Khinshteyn, with his rather specific reputation? The remarkable ???????foresight??????? of these prophetic ladies might have been thought to put the prophetess Baba Vanga to shame, were it not for all their previous propagandist activities on the site, which had long before caused readers to have doubts about their true place of work.

After the scandal broke, the MN site administrator simply purged the archives of all the forums on which the women????????s postings had appeared. When he was finished, not a trace remained of this premature leak of information.

Yet another very telling incident occurred on the forum of the journal ???????Novaya Gazeta??????? in February 2002, when a certain person under the nickname ???????Obaldevshiy ot Anni??????? (???????Driven crazy by Anna???????), in remarks on an article by Anna Politkovskaya, posted this text:

George Soros made a big contribution to ???????Novaya Gazeta??????? for the creation of databases of people kidnapped in Chechnya, hostages and war criminals. Soros later returned to see how his grant money was being spent. No databases whatsoever. But here our little Anka, the machine-gunner, shows up again. And it all makes perfect sense. How can one create such a database, when the horrible FSB is always encroaching on the life and dignity of poor Ms. Politkovskaya? But it would appear that in this case Soros is not buying it. Soros is now planning to cut off financing to ???????Novaya Gazeta??????? due to ???????improper use of grant money???????. So there it is. And one more thing ???????? for the serious specialist: Why in the world would the FSB defend the GRU? They have always been the fiercest competitors in every area of activity ???????? both intelligence-gathering and covert action. They????????re like the MVD and Prosecutor General, ready at any moment to take each other by the throat. And if a GRU spetznaz officer ever committed a crime, the FSB would do everything possible to expose it. The GRU are war-fighters, white-boned aristocrats, while the FSB is the successor to the KGB. Between them there will never be peace, they????????ll never eat from the same bowl.

The above text was repeated almost verbatim by FSB representative Ilya Shabalkin on this exact topic. This would be nothing surprising, except that the announcement of Comrade Shabalkin took place just four days AFTER the appearance of this posting.

Obviously, one hardly needs to add that the anonymous person????????s information, prematurely leaked on the ???????Novaya Gazeta??????? forum and repeated by the senior FSB officer nine days later, had absolutely no basis in reality and was quickly refuted by both the editors of Novaya Gazeta and the Soros Foundation.With regards to the skinheads and fascists in Russia, maybe for a complete picture we should consider the possibility that the Western intelligence services have had a hand in this, eh? On the principle of ???????divide and conquer???????. Just like they did with ultra-nationalist and fundamentalist organizations in other parts of the former Soviet Union. Why not suppose that the Chechen ???????freedom fighters??????? and ???????Moscow skinheads??????? were organized by one and the same force? The KGB men have no use for ultra-nationalism, because it destabilizes the region, and former KGB officers would never cut off the branch on which they are sitting. But well-organized neo-Nazis in the Soviet space might be quite useful to the west. By the word ???????west??????? I mean not the people of North America and Western Europe, but the intelligence services of those places. And their various propaganda specialists.

Yet another similar ???????premature??????? release of information onto the Internet occurred on a forum of the magazine ???????Moskovskiye Novosti???????. Strangely, its author presented himself as a Georgian artist of pro-communist leanings living in Europe. Here is his text, most interesting of all being the date ???????? April 13, 2002:

With regards to the skinheads and fascists in Russia, maybe for a complete picture we should consider the possibility that the Western intelligence services have had a hand in this, eh? On the principle of ???????divide and conquer???????. Just like they did with ultra-nationalist and fundamentalist organizations in other parts of the former Soviet Union. Why not suppose that the Chechen ???????freedom fighters??????? and ???????Moscow skinheads??????? were organized by one and the same force? The KGB men have no use for ultra-nationalism, because it destabilizes the region, and former KGB officers would never cut off the branch on which they are sitting. But well-organized neo-Nazis in the Soviet space might be quite useful to the west. By the word ???????west??????? I mean not the people of North America and Western Europe, but the intelligence services of those places. And their various propaganda specialists.

Six days passed. April 19, 2002 arrived. An then on the site Lenta.ru there appeared the following, very doubtful report:

LENTA.RU: RUSSIAN SKINHEADS RECEIVING HELP FROM ABROAD.

Information available to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs indicates that Russian ???????skinheads??????? may be receiving financial assistance from abroad. This was announced on April 19 during an interview by ???????Interfax??????? of the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Aleksandr Chekalin. He believes that ???????we cannot fail to consider the foreign here, and we cannot exclude the possibility that young skinheads are finding sponsors and supporters from outside the local area.??????? ???????Our job now ???????? together with the intelligence services ???????? is to prove or disprove this???????, the deputy minister emphasized.

So this ???????Georgian emigrant-artist???????, always in solidarity with the pro-KGB Brigade of the site, managed to anticipate on the forum exactly the amusing and very doubtful announcement of the MVD representative, who subsequently was not able to come up with any proof or further developments.

When did all this start?

This phenomenon is relatively new, very little studied, and is still awaiting researchers. As recently as 1998, such a large number of readers of a uniform type, with a conservative pro-government point of view, making use a common methodology and base of information, simply did not exist on the RuNet. People with communist and fascist viewpoints appeared only extremely rarely, and were found on forums in the ratio of about 1:50 in comparison to people of democratic persuasions. Much less were there any such ???????active measures???????, following exactly the actions of the authorities. There were no personal, planned, mass houndings of one or another political figure who was out of favor with the current authorities. No obvious propaganda or counterpropaganda actions were visible, especially actions synchronized with government propaganda and precisely following the changing positions of Kremlin ideologues.

Here we present a short quote from one of the personalities we have described, in which he attempts to explain the unusual sociological transformation of Russian public opinion on the Internet, starting in 1999. By way of background: the brigadniki nowadays often call their opponents ???????paid propagandists of Boris A. Berezovskiy, or ???????BAB, Inc.??????? Clearly, it is too taxing for the soldiers of Ideology.gov.ru to imagine that their opponents might have their own motives for being on the Internet (such as their world view, political convictions and other such obsolete concepts) beyond conducting agitprop for money. So here is how the uniform personalities explain their simultaneous mass genesis on the RuNet:

???????It is funny how the entire argument for the BAB, Inc. team????????s main thesis rests on the fact that a couple of years ago the ideological complexion of the RuNet underwent a sharp change. Previously, so they say, a group progressive youth were nailing the Russian government, but now they????????re gone. And, well, the fact that the age and social makeup of participants on RuNet forums has changed sharply (representatives of the middle and older generations have started to participate actively in discussions), BAB could care less, since it doesn????????t correspond to their strategic interests. So they try to catch a black cat in a dark room that isn????????t there??????????????

The author of this posting openly admits that in recent times there has been a genuinely SHARP change in the ideological complexion of the RuNet, but gives an explanation for this ???????sociological phenomenon??????? that does not stand up to scrutiny.

Cui prodest? (Who benefits?)

It is completely obvious that the Russian authorities would like to take the mass media under control. The Internet is something new to them though, and methods for taking control developed in newspapers and television work poorly here. One could, of course, attempt to take under one????????s ideological control all the leading news sites and most popular online publications by buying them out or infiltrating one????????s own people into them (as is essentially happening now). But in the absence of any single Director of the Internet, and the in the presence of a huge variety of web publications and interactive forums where anyone can participate in discussions freely, outside of the range of political censors ???????? in the presence of this great variety of form and substance the authorities are unable to impose on the RuNet any strict and steady ideological line, and cannot reliably control and protect the government????????s approach to it. Any yet they must still conduct their propaganda and counterpropaganda.

Compared with Soviet times, the ways and means of government propaganda have greatly improved. Budgetary resources for PR are nowadays never in short supply. Not being privy to the details of the ???????projects??????? for ???????Creation of a positive image of Russia???????, ???????Strengthening of information security??????? and ???????Creation of a unified information space???????, we would suppose that these cannot help but affect the Internet, and in particular the popular political forums, on which any participant can write whatever he wants. And here is what the propaganda budget figures look like, as provided by ???????Novaya Gazeta???????:

In 2002, Russia spent on space flight 9.74 billion rubles; on military reform, 16.55 billion; on government television and radio, 9.5 billion rubles. In 2003, the corresponding lines of the budget had new figures: On space flight, 7.65 billion; on reform of the army, 15.8 billion; on government electronic mass media, 11.02 billion rubles.

The peculiar thing about any propaganda is that it must always be all-encompassing. If any place is left free of influence from government ideology, then the effectiveness of any propaganda campaign is sharply reduced. It seems likely that exactly this specific feature of the RuNet led to the sudden appearance of hundreds of uniformly national-government, ???????patriotically???????-minded (as they like to call themselves) personalities, who resemble each other like the soldiers of a single division.

We note that on forums people make new acquaintances, groups of like-minded people come together, and public opinion is formed. One can understand how the organizers of ???????a single information space??????? and ???????creators of if a positive image of Russia??????? would try to destroy in the womb this independent public opinion, even if it is only in the virtual realm (inseparable as that is from modern life).

Such actions, however, often lead to counterproductive results: people on RuNet forums already are striving to defend and support one another against the coordinated aggressions of the Brigade. It was exactly in this way that the authors of this article, living as they did in different countries, met and became friends. Our experiences participating in various web-forums turned out to be very similar. As a result, this article came into being, with our collective observations. But we leave it to our readers to draw their own conclusions from the above.

Kim Zigfeld is owner of the Russia blog La Russophobe.