From Челябинск With Love: Russian YouTube Use as an Alternative Public Sphere

In January of 2021, after being poisoned and while facing an impending prison sentence, dissident activist Alexei Navalny released a Russian-language video. Navalny details the extensive corruption of the Russian state under Vladimir Putin, with over 118 million views as of September 2021. The well-known but not well-documented personal collaboration of Putin and various insiders of the kleptocracy from the military and business sectors is shown in an accessible medium, a hybrid format of Russian language audio and English closed-captioning translations. Farther east and seemingly far removed from the inner circles of Moscow and Saint Petersburg’s activist communities, Chelyabinsk-based YouTuber Roman Abalin, better known as NFKRZ, regularly posts content on the site that also pushes boundaries of censorship, having described a need to edit and remove videos for fears of government reprisal. 

Russia, in comparison to other authoritarian countries, does permit recreational use of YouTube though its political uses for dissidents are not clear cut as a place of entirely free expression. I argue that Navalny and NFKRZ’s use of Youtube illustrates broader and existing trends of personalized political action on the internet, as well as the risks imposed by the Russian government through censorship of this vocalization of grievance. In this vein, Alexei Navalny’s exposé brings to life the increasing personalization of political movements posited by Bennett and Segerberg (2012). As well, NFKRZ’s videos and explanations of personal censorship for fear of government reprisal connect to Margaret E. Roberts’ concepts of censorship resilience. 

Navalny

As YouTube is a global platform rather than one tied to a specific linguistic or national group, Alexei Navalny’s views are from outside of Russia’s borders as well as inside. In the video, Navalny uses footage from drones and a computer animated model made from anonymous insider intelligence to show a tangible result of Russia's government-enabled post-Soviet kleptocracy. The focus on the alleged residence, a $1 billion Black Sea palace more decadent than that of the Czars, attempts to appeal to Russians who are opposed to or on the fence about Putin and his United Russia party. The open-source film does not call for support for a particular policy or political party, but rather seeks to reach as many people as possible and provoke a sense of injustice. Bennett and Segerberg (2012) describe the movement of large organizations of organizationally brokered collective action to more individualized connective action. Connective action can be either organizationally enabled or self-organizing, of which the video shows a hybrid, as the video is organized by a leading opposition figure but can result in further anomic action online. Though Navalny is imprisoned, the video will continue to exist as an easily shareable form of digital content that can be shared inside Russia or abroad. 

NFKRZ

Far from Navalny’s political base is Chelyabinsk, a nondescript industrial city situated in the Ural Mountains near Yekaterinburg in the far reaches of Russia’s original empire. Yet this is exactly where “your favorite neighborhood Russian” - as he calls himself - lives, in a classic Soviet apartment. NFKRZ’s YouTube videos in English feature topics such as poverty, lack of hope, and military conscription along with commentary of Russian cultural trends and lived experiences. In his video “my paranoia as a Russian Youtuber” (2021), NFKRZ illuminates the reality of a young creative experiencing censorship and fear in Russia. A specific example raised by NFKRZ mentioned is having had to remove a video of a trip to Vienna because of the inclusion of a gay pride parade. As Russia has laws against “LGBT propaganda”, this fear of reprisal is legitimate, as he also mentions treading carefully to avoid government attention that other celebrities have received in the form of fines, trials, or imprisonment. Margaret Roberts’ concept of censorship methods consisting of fear, friction, and flooding, relates to these concerns. The Russian government has instituted fear through ambiguous content laws, though there is awareness of the censorship, which can be “key to resilience.” However, “knowledge of censorship might create chilling effects, motivating users to self-censor,” as NFKRZ has had to do.

Policy Implications

Policymakers and scholars should further analyze YouTube as a place of dissident action and communication in Russia, as well as in other authoritarian countries of the Former Soviet Union. Global platforms like YouTube have been heralded as part of an increasingly interconnected internet across cultural and linguistic borders, but clearly a dichotomy exists between concept and reality for Russian dissident users. Western governments should be wary of allowing corporations to acquiesce to special Russian government demands for social media platforms based in western countries but used in Russia. As protests, dissidence, and movements continue to be created and often solely based on the internet, withdrawing their ability to be used by users in Russia and other authoritarian countries due to government demands restricts access to both tools that do not have inherent government censorship applications in their design and global exposure. NFKRZ can reach the world through his videos, but through fear and chilling effects must religiously self-censor. Alexei Navalny can promote a viral exposé to his country and the rest of the world but remains imprisoned on arbitrary charges immediately after returning from medical care in Germany due to a poisoning. From the necessity to release information quickly before imprisonment, Navalny furthered his movement’s transition to more organizationally brokered connective models of action. While Navalny sits in prison, NFKRZ can travel abroad to Europe and post content ridiculing military conscription, but self-censors his videos, showing awareness of censorship but also the fear element inherent for dissident YouTubers under Russian state control of the internet.