Oleg Kashin, special correspondent for the newspaper Kommersant and well-known blogger, was brutally beaten near his home in November 2010 [ru]. A video recording of the attack was subsequently published on the Internet [ru]. President Medvedev tweeted about the incident and said that the criminals should be found and punished. Important accounts of this attack on Kashin were described on Global Voices by Alexey Sidorenko. In December, 2010 Kashin published an article “A beating on my beat” in the New York Times. He took part in an international conference beginning the same day as World Press Freedom Day, where he spoke to Global Voices (GV). Oleg Kashin. Image by Gregory Asmolov (CC BY-NC 2.0). Global Voices (GV): Oleg, as a blogger and well-known journalist, to what extent do you make a connection between your attack and with attempts to limit the freedom of the Russian Internet? Oleg Kashin (OK): It was said in a Freedom House report that the attack on myself was an attack against a blogger. I absolutely do not share this opinion; if you are a practising journalist then you work round the clock, in whatever capacity. Yesterday we were at the celebrations near the White House [this interview was conducted in Washington on the following day after the killing of Bin Laden] and I uploaded a video to YouTube. In what capacity did I upload it – as a journalist or as a blogger? As a journalist, I believe, and only because Moscow, and indeed the editors were sleeping. A quick response is important and so I can upload a video to YouTube, still as a journalist, and then, taking my time I can write an article for the newspaper. And it's just that blogging being ‘separate’ is an illusion, because professional bloggers – as they call themselves – are people who acquire ‘friends’ and readers (not necessarily through honest methods) and earn money on pushing hidden ads. They're not respected by the community. Because a person who earns money by posting some paid links in the blog is a second class person for those who earn money elsewhere and use blog as a form of communication and socialization, at least non-commercial one. We have a lot of bloggers, and some are anonymous, who often curse, offend and so on. But, when their status as a blogger is confirmed to be a journalist with Kommersant, then the name journalist becomes of the utmost importance. GV: How would you characterise the degree of freedom in the Russian Internet and what threats exist to this freedom? OK: My favourite example is the recent story about a blogger from the Oryol region. In a demonstration in Triumph Square in Moscow a person came out with the the placard ‘Putin – Pidoras’ [a pejorative name for male homosexual]. The Moscow blogger Norvezhsky Lesnoy (Norwegian Forest Cat) photographed him, then a blogger, Georgiy Sarkiyan, from Oryol who wasn't at the scene of the event and on the whole bears no relation to the story, reposted the photo and the Oryol Prosecutor's office stirred up a case against him. [You can read about a similar story here which took place in the Komi Republic]. This type of occurrence where local channels of law and order enact repression against bloggers is fairly commonplace. This case and that of Irek Murtazin, who wrote about the death of Shaimiev [President of the Tartastan Republic at the time and who wasn't actually dead] and was convicted in Tartastan, and lastly there is Savva Terentyev, who wrote about the police as “disloyal cops”. He didn't manage to post it during an anti-militia campaign, otherwise he would have become a mainstream favourite on the newscast “Vremya” (Time). On the ground, as a rule, it's crazy and you see some comic situations like the one in Komsomolsk-on-Amur where a court banned YouTube. But, this, whatever it is, is an example of many different Russias. Even now, however, imagining that Anton Nossik [popular Russian blogger] would be taken to the police for a comment on a blog is almost impossible. Nossik could rather appear in a meeting with Medvedev, than in a police department. And since bad leadership/corruption starts at the top it also democratizes from the top, and the very fact that Medvedev is an active blogger has led to blogs becoming practically a government mission. Now the process is just beginning, there's still another generation that has yet to come to power, and then the blogosphere will become a valid representation of the society. It's possible to observe this already; for example, half of the governors, albeit scattered about here and there, have their own blog.