We've come a long way since the days when Russian Internet users could be expected to fill their blogs with praise for democracy, freedom, and an end to the Putin regime in Russia. In the last few years, we witnessed a conservative renaissance on the RuNet, though it's unclear where the community goes from here. Whatever happens, it's safe to say that Nikolai Starikov, Russia's conservative writer, activist, politician, and Internet sensation, had a good 2016. On Nov. 15, security services arrested Economic Development Minister Aleksey Ulyukaev on charges of corruption, accusing him of having solicited a $2-million bribe. The news delighted Starikov, along with many other conservative figures, who say the minister's liberal policies only weakened Russia. “Ulyukaev's arrest: our brothers go to work!” he exclaimed on Twitter. Неуемное желание либералов распродать госсобственность вызвано банальным желанием урвать себе пару млн $. Мы так и думали, теперь уверены. — Николай Стариков (@nstarikov) November 15, 2016 The liberals’ irrepressible desire to sell the State’s property was caused by a banal desire to get their hands on a few million dollars. We thought so, and now we're sure. Three days after Ulyukaev went down, Starikov got another reason to celebrate, when a Moscow court upheld the blacklisting of the Levada Center, Russia's last major independent pollster. As a leading figure in the pro-Kremlin “Anti-Maidan” movement, Starikov pushed hard to get Russian officials to list Levada as a “foreign agent,” saddling the organization with crippling new regulations. Сегодня суд подтвердил статус “НКО иностранный агент” для Левады Центра. Закон должен выполняться – такова позиция Антимайдана. — Николай Стариков (@nstarikov) November 18, 2016 A court confirmed today Levada Center’s “foreign agent” status. The law must be observed — that is the position of the Antimaidan. You might not expect it, but Nikolai Starikov claims to be a member of Russia's opposition. The “Great Fatherland Party,” which he founded in 2013, was barred from participating in the 2016 parliamentary elections—a decision Starikov says was “political.” His brand of opposition politics has an especially narrow focus. “Of course, we support our president on matters of foreign policy, but we believe that the continuation of policies started by the Medvedev government—the privatizations, the freezing of pensions, the sale of state property—all this is very dangerous for Russia,” Starikov told me in an interview. Starikov criticizes the Medvedev government, especially the economic policies he considers to be “liberal,” but his most important belief is the need for stability against “external enemies.” In this context, Vladimir Putin's legitimacy as the head of state is not a matter up for discussion. Nikolai Starikov / Wikipedia Starikov’s opinion, which he shares relentlessly on social media and his two blogs, potentially carries serious influence on the Russian Internet. His page on Vkontakte boasts nearly 200,000 subscribers, and another 51,000 accounts follow him on Twitter. His Youtube page has more than two dozen videos with a total of 100,000 views, and his LiveJournal page is one of the most-read blogs on the network. “All without doping,” Starikov laughed. It may seem obvious that Russian conservative groups would dominate the RuNet, given Putin’s sky-high popularity ratings, as well as the Russian government's increasingly tighter grip on the media and certain kinds of political expression. But conservatives actually came very late to the party, says Dr. Galina Nikiporets-Takigawa, the dean of Moscow's Russian State Social University's Humanities Faculty and a lecturer at Cambridge University, who co-edited and co-wrote a book on Russian online political movements. “Conservatives started using the Internet after the liberals, after the nationalists, after the religious groups, [and] after the civil activists, because they were the only ideological movement that had full access to all Russian media—including state television,” Nikiporets-Takigawa says. Throughout the 2000s, the Web was one of the few places Russian liberals still felt free to express themselves. Conservatives, meanwhile, felt no need for any refuge; they were, overall, satisfied with getting published in Kremlin-friendly newspapers and speaking on state television, according to Nikiporets-Takigawa's research.