‘We help you, and you help us’ Russia's State Duma meets with bloggers and talks selfies, for some reason

The State Duma held a meeting of its new bloggers’ council on Monday, roughly a month after YouTube star Sasha Spilberg stepped up to the Duma’s podium and delivered a speech about Russia’s contemporary youth, where she derided anti-corruption activists as “supporters of extremes” who “protest because someone wears yellow sneakers.” The council is the brainchild of Vasily Vlasov, the Duma’s youngest member. Seated at the roundtable were Elizaveta Peskova, the daughter of the Kremlin’s press secretary, the authors of the videoblog Big Russian Boss, members of the satirical online community Lentach, and others. Those in attendance were treated to remarks by right-wing politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Duma Deputy Speaker Peter Tolstoy. Special correspondent Taisiya Bekbulatova reports for Meduza on the meeting.

Monday’s meeting of the bloggers’ council set out the following agenda: “establishing a format for working with representatives of the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet,” “identifying the current issues of concern for Internet users,” and “developing proposals for reforms to regulations in the IT industry.”

The first person to speak was Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who began with an announcement that he’s not especially at home online. He then said that a new generation has grown up for whom the Internet “is the norm,” promising that bloggers who decide to join the council on a permanent basis can count on a clean and warm meeting space at the Duma building, where they won’t be “busted” by police, which he said could happen, if the bloggers were to meet somewhere else. Zhirinovsky warned that police “might not understand,” whereas the Federal Protective Service will guard bloggers meeting at the Duma, he said. “We help you, and you help us,” the 71-year-old politician added.

What kind of help should bloggers be providing? Zhirinovsky suggested that “contaminated watermelons” (“because of the nitrates”) could be one area of focus. He also proposed nationwide competitions for “who has the most selfies” or “who has the greatest intellect.” Zhirinovsky even asked for help with his presidential campaign, saying, “Have an impact on the 2018 race! Do everything you can to make me president! I can promise you pensions.”

After Zhirinovsky wrapped up, Peter Tolstoy took over and shared a few contradictory observations. Duma deputies aren’t some “moldy old cheese,” he said, pointing out that lawmakers actually use tablets during Duma sessions. “We all understand the Internet even better than you understand the State Duma,” Tolstoy claimed. So why does the Duma need a bloggers’ council at all? Some of the older lawmakers might be hiding a little mold, it turns out. Some of these deputies “don’t really understand the Internet” and need “direct communication” with bloggers, Tolstoy explained. “Their strengths lie elsewhere,” he said, referring to his older colleagues. The bloggers’ council will become part of the Duma’s committee on physical fitness, sports, tourism, and youth affairs. “We’re going to try to hold this platform on a regular basis,” Tolstoy said.

For now, the blogger’s council exists as a personal initiative by Vasily Vlasov. On May 30, Vlasov appealed to Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin with a request to make the working group a formal and permanent council within the State Duma, but Volodin has expressed skepticism about the proposal. Leonid Levin, the chairman of the Duma’s committee on information policy and technology, went a step further and accused Vlasov of “only wanting to raise his media profile.” 

Duma deputies in support of the council have so far been unable to clarify the selection criteria for the council’s members. Vlasov says he’ll be calling on everyone, from the chief editor of Sports.ru, to the popular videoblogger Yuri Dud, to billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who recently criticized opposition politician Alexey Navalny in two online videos. Zhirinovsky pushed back against this approach, insisting that membership needs to be capped, otherwise no one will be able to hear each other, he said.

Whatever the council’s eventual selection criteria, not even everyone invited to Monday’s meeting actually showed up. The aforementioned Yuri Dud, for example, said he refuses to attend a “Komsomol meeting,” referring to the USSR’s Leninist Young Communist League.

The bloggers who did attend the meeting were predominantly people loyal to the authorities. Egor Yakovlev, the head of the “Selfie” community on Vkontakte, said the council’s makeup was the result of “skepticism” among video bloggers when it comes to the State Duma.

According to blogger Konstantin Tkachenko (who manages the “Kremlin Russian” Instagram account, which has more than 850,000 subscribers and shares photos and quotes from top-ranking state officials), many YouTube bloggers didn’t come because they have an “oppositionist audience” and they simply don’t understand the bloggers who did attend. “They’d be drowned in comments like ‘You sell out!’” Tkachenko explained. Blogger Elena Lisovskaya said she doesn’t encounter “anything negative” in comments on her videos, and dismissed other bloggers’ oppositionist audiences as “just a bunch of cranky kiddies.” 

Elizaveta Peskova, the daughter of the Kremlin’s press secretary, sat through most of the meeting in silence, speaking up only about Zhirinovsky’s proposed selfie contest. Peskova told the group that she “takes selfies only very rarely.”

With that revelation, the floor returned to the Duma deputies seated around the table, who repeated their promises that nobody wants to “put pressure” on bloggers. The politicians called for further discussion and urged opposition bloggers to participate in future meetings. Just before the event concluded, Zhirinovsky’s self restraint gave out and he grabbed center stage once more to declare that opposition politician Alexey Navalny “is the beginning of an orange revolution,” arguing that the state must sometimes preventatively punish citizens “just as parents proactively punish a child.”