The common notion that the Internet empowers those with democratic and liberal values is occasionally challenged by stories coming out of Russian online communities. The blogosphere can certainly be a place where people share valuable content with wide audience, but it can also become a platform for attacking virtual identities. Unfortunately, availability of information and growing connections between virtual and real personalities make online harassment as real as it gets. Maria Gromakova, a young blogger from St. Petersburg, experienced the evil potential of the Internet first hand. Constant attacks of Russian radical nationalists on her blog turned Maria's life into a living hell and made her and her small family leave Russia. Maria studied philology at St. Petersburg University where she concentrated on teaching Russian to foreigners. She also played at a local theater and worked as an anchor at a local TV station. In 2007, Maria started teaching Russian at one of the universities in China. There she met Bo, a professional athlete and her future husband. Maria has been keeping a blog on Livejournal.com [RUS] since 2005. Colorful posts about life in China quickly made her online diary popular with more 1,500 regular subscribers to the blog posts. Maria and Bo came back to St. Petersburg in 2009 just few months before their son was born. Maria's blog was filled with joyful updates about their first child. This turned out to be a terrible mistake. In one of her blog posts, Maria told readers that she and her son had been attacked on a city train. One of the passengers pushed Maria when she, Bo and their son were getting off the train. Maria nearly fell down but Bo caught her at the last moment. She also recollected that the person who pushed was loudly complaining to his friends about “Russian whores who make mutants with Asians.” Meant to expose an ugly face of Russian extreme nationalism, the blog post caused a different effect. “It all started with a young man who openly supports fascists’ points of view,” Maria told in an interview to Global Voices. “He found my blog with this story and photos of my child. He put those photos on his blog with comments about “a bloody race prostitute who gave a birth to a defected product from the racial perspective.” This motivated many supporters of rock_my_cock, the blogger who started harassing Maria online, to visit her blog and leave offensive comments and threats. “I want our race to survive,” rock_my_cock wrote to Maria. “It’s not a question of personal desires, but eugenics. And you have wasted your genetic code. I am very frustrated by it.” Rock_my_cock later deleted his account on Livejournal.com But the harassment did not stop there. Few days later, Maria got an e-mail that contained a photo collage with a terrifying name “How to cook a baby.” “They wrote that the only way I can get excuse for my guilt against the Russian nation for marrying Asian is to kill our ‘frog’ [the name Russian nationalists gave Marina's son – GV), since ‘he is not human,’ and make a soup according to instructions that were attached,” Maria said. “They also promised to visit me and taste the soup. I was also required to divorce my husband immediately or else they threatened to hurt him.” Those people also said that they knew Maria's home address and phone number. Unable to tolerate the harassment any longer, Maria published a blog post where she revealed her intentions to find the people behind the threats and report them to Russian authorities. The blog was hacked soon after the post and all blog content was deleted. The same thing happened to Maria's and Bo's e-mail accounts. The hackers later published “How to cook a baby” collage on Maria's blog and wrote that “the soup from the son was very delicious.” Maria did not have any choice but to address the blogosphere [RUS]: Господа! Это Мария Громакова строчит с аккаунта своего мужа. Сегодня ночью наши отечественные фашисты взломали мне ЖЖ! И удалили ВСЕ записи, начиная с 2005 года. […] Поэтому очень прошу всех, кто может мне хоть чем-то информационно или по факту помочь – связаться со мной по мобильному телефону в виде смс. Или, не связываясь со мной, просто хоть что-то сделать, чтобы мне помочь! The word about the story spread around Russian online community and led to angry reaction from ordinary bloggers. LJ user Pushba wrote: Где мы живет и о чем мы думаем – уже не важно. Важно то, что меня трясет, когда я думаю о фашизме, особенно в контексте нашей страны. Я, конечно, понимаю, что этот ублюдок просто повышает себе гребаный рейтинг подобными постами, но не могу не написать об этом. В данном случае – жестокость выживается только жестокостью – кто бы его сварил? At the same time, some people were afraid to actively defend Maria.