Issue 14: Digital Orthodoxy – Mediating Post-Secularity in Russia

n October 2015, Runet heatedly discussed the leak of information about the (failed) attempt of the Russian Ministry of Communications to cut the country off from the internet. The crackdown on the freedom of the internet is the marked tendency of President Putin’s third term in power, which has resulted in the closing down of thousands of webpages, including oppositional news agencies. One of the most important sources of motivation for this prohibitive activity is religious ethics. For example, the League for Safe Internet, blessed by Patriarch Kirill, has been hunting for pedophiles in the social networks since 2011, as well as reporting online pornography, propaganda of extremism, LGBT, methods of committing suicide, and similar information, sinful from the Orthodox viewpoint. In spite of the very high level of internet penetration in Russian society (70.5% in 2015, ‘Internet World Users’ 2015), the idea of state control over the digital environment has found a receptive soil among the broader public and its ardent advocates in the political elite (e.g. Potupchik and Fedorova 2014). I