The death of the ‘Wikipedia killer’ The project Putin once proposed as a Wikipedia replacement has closed after the Russian government cut its funding
Last month, the editorial board of the Great Russian Encyclopedia, a comprehensive Russian-language reference work and successor to the Soviet-era Great Soviet Encyclopedia, announced its closure. In 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that the encyclopedia could serve as an alternative to Wikipedia. But now, the encyclopedia has gone under due to the government halting funding. The outlet T-invariant explored what’s behind the cut in funding, whether the encyclopedia was ever truly intended to be a “Wikipedia killer,” and what other Russian-language resources might fill the void. Meduza shares a summary of the outlet’s findings.
The Great Russian Encyclopedia, a successor to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, was first published in 2004 and launched its electronic version in 2016. In a post announcing its closure, the editors noted that the online version’s editorial process is six times faster than the print edition, producing the equivalent of 18 print volumes per year.
The encyclopedia is funded by Russia’s Culture Ministry — a fact that doesn’t affect articles on the natural sciences, math, and technology. It does, however, heavily influence those on politics, history, and sociology, sometimes with peculiar results. For instance, a search for the current Russian president’s name yields no biography. Instead, the top result is an article on Vladimir Putin’s speech about annexing Crimea, followed by one on his meeting with the first Chechen president, Akhmad Kadyrov, on May 9, 2004, and then a jumbled series of articles on Russian elections.
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Biographical articles are typically absent for politicians who might stir controversy. A search for “Navalny” brings up articles on a type of wind with the same name, the Solidarnost movement, and the Yabloko party (with a note that the party expelled him and that he was imprisoned in 2021). There’s no mention of his death.
There’s also no biography of U.S. President Joe Biden, unlike former President Donald Trump. And in the “Presidents, heads of state, and other authorities” section, the first article is about Kurt Waldheim, who served as president of Austria from 1986 to 1992. There’s no information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the site at all.
T-invariant couldn’t determine why certain articles are prominently featured on the website or who selects the entries for the encyclopedia. However, occasional public conflicts with authors do offer some insight. For instance, in 2022, physicist and human rights activist Boris Altshuler wrote an article on Soviet nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov that was rejected for focusing too much on Sakharov’s “controversial human rights activities.” Following this rejection, Altshuler refused to collaborate with the encyclopedia.
Some omissions can be attributed to a conservative editorial approach. “The index (list of terms, concepts, and events) for the Great Russian Encyclopedia was largely taken from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia,” Dmitri Wiebe, a Russian astronomer who contributed to the encyclopedia’s print version, told T-invariant. “For example, I had to write articles on topics that were already outdated. The topics were set long ago. Thanks to a large team of professionals, many Great Soviet Encyclopedia articles were completely rewritten. For some, we used old texts, only partially updating them. For instance, not much has changed in the construction of a sextant over the past 50 years.”
The encyclopedia’s website says: “The portal’s main purpose is to create and maintain an up-to-date electronic national knowledge base in Russian and to popularize science and research results. The portal is intended for educational use, scientific work, and more. The portal’s most important principle is providing truthful scientific information and building user trust.”
“People spend their lives writing dictionaries and encyclopedias,” noted Vladimir Surdin, a well-known Russian astronomer who authored and reviewed a series of articles for the encyclopedia, in an interview with T-invariant. This is crucial work, he added, but it often goes unrecognized: “We often don’t even know the names of encyclopedia editors and authors.”
Killing Wiki
In 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed hope that the Great Russian Encyclopedia would replace Wikipedia, earning it the nickname “Wikipedia killer.” Nevertheless, the encyclopedia’s management didn’t view it as a Wikipedia alternative. In a 2023 interview, executive editor Sergey Kravets said: “We have different audiences. Whether we like it or not, an encyclopedia has never been mass-read material.”
Philologist Alexander Kravetsky, who has written articles for the Great Russian Encyclopedia, told T-invariant that the editorial team is divided into departments and multiple specialists work on each article, “ensuring diverse scientific perspectives.” “These two sources function differently,” Kravetsky commented. “Wikipedia is more responsive to public opinion and interest. It reacts quickly; it’s updated faster, almost in real time. However, when seeking information on fundamental humanities topics, it becomes apparent that Wikipedia, though written by enthusiastic individuals, often lacks professional input.”
Nearly all interviewees agreed that both Wikipedia and the Great Russian Encyclopedia have their own advantages and that one is not a substitute for the other. Georgy Kurakin, who served as scientific director of the encyclopedia’s biology editorial team in 2022, remarked:
Having an alternative to Wikipedia is often seen as a means to make blocking it easier. Consequently, the moral evaluations of the Great Russian Encyclopedia may be mixed. However, I joined the project because I knew [the encyclopedia] wasn’t a Wikipedia killer. It simply couldn’t be! […] The Great Russian Encyclopedia has a different style and audience, dictated by its well-known and respected brand.
“The Great Russian Encyclopedia and Wikipedia are built on different principles and aren’t alternatives to each other,” Sergey Popov, a Russian astrophysicist and author of several of the encyclopedia’s articles, told T-invariant. “An encyclopedic article should be conservative, balanced, and well-written. Wikipedia, on the other hand, is a self-organized project. Creating an encyclopedia article involves multiple people with shared responsibility: the author, scientific editor, literary editor, reviewers — a whole team whose work is still needed, even in the era of self-organization.”
Censored versions
One possible reason funding for the Great Russian Encyclopedia was cut off is the emergence of RuWiki — a Russian-language version of Wikipedia that fully complies with Russian legislation and censorship. RuWiki has also been positioned as a “Wikipedia replacement,” although in a 2023 interview, its director, Vladimir Medeyko countered this, saying: “We aren’t aiming to compete with Wikipedia; we have our own niche. We believe there should be a comprehensive encyclopedic source that students can proudly refer to. We intend to filter topics, focusing on academic matters rather than being a news portal.”
However, a comparison of Ruwiki articles with their Wikipedia counterparts casts doubt on his words. Most articles, except those related to political events, are exact replicas of Wikipedia entries. To date, RuWiki hosts over two million articles — about as many as Wikipedia has in Russian.
“RuWiki is pure censorship,” asserted Alexander Sergeev, a science journalist. “It’s not a collective of authors but a collective of censors aiming to sanitize Wikipedia. In contrast, the Great Russian Encyclopedia is a collective of authors and editors who, even if working under censorship, see their role as a dialogue with the censors. That’s why I think the Great Russian Encyclopedia would’ve had a better chance of success if Wikipedia were blocked.”
Znanie.Wiki is another similar, though less well-known, project, launched by the Znanie Society in 2019. “Maybe they decided not to spend the budget on the balanced, apolitical Great Russian Encyclopedia but to allocate these funds to the Znanie Society, which, let’s be honest, was also founded in 1947 primarily for political purposes and only secondarily for scientific ones,” suggested Vladimir Surdin.
Znanie.Wiki currently has only 22,000 “original” articles, while the Russian-language version of Wikipedia has around two million. However, the originality of Znanie’s articles is debatable. In 2022, Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadaev said that articles on Znanie.Wiki would be based on similar ones in the Great Russian Encyclopedia. But in February of this year, Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky suggested copying all “harmless” Russian-language Wikipedia articles to Znanie’s site. According to Medinsky, 99 percent of the articles on Wikipedia are “neutral,” and the rest containing “enemy slander” could be replaced with articles from Russian sites or newly created ones.
New Znanie.Wiki articles are written by volunteers rather than professionals; however, they’re only published after review by editors. Consequently, the new portal lags in quality compared to the encyclopedia and in speed and coverage compared to Wikipedia.
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The reasons behind the cessation of funding for the Great Russian Encyclopedia are still a matter of speculation. No official explanations have been provided to date. “It can’t be said that this is a crucial investment. You can fire cannons without the Great Russian Encyclopedia,” remarked Vladimir Surdin. “Unfortunately, officials do many things with no explanation, just to tick off a box that the work was done.”
For several months, the encyclopedia has been operating without funds. Now, it’s not even clear what will happen to the materials already written and published on the website. When asked whether work on the Great Russian Encyclopedia could resume in the future, interviewees gave T-invariant a wide range of responses. One said, “This is a unique team; it would be almost impossible to assemble it again.” Another commented, “If it was possible to rewrite the Great Soviet Encyclopedia after 50 years and make a good product out of it, what prevents us from doing the same in the future? Hopefully, there will still be knowledgeable educators and competent editors in Russia.”
Reporting by Yulia Chernaya for T-invariant