Abstract (in English)
Almost two decades of Russian literary Internet (Rulinet) evoke observations about the directions it is taking and the communities shaping it. Runet (Russian language Internet) started as a literary phenomenon in the early 1990’s (Gorny 2007) with Dmitry Manin’s Bout Rimes and Roman Leibov’s ROMAN (Novel), Zhurnal.ru, Moshkov Library. The initial reason for this was technical – a low bandwidth internet meant it was necessary to engage audiences through textual means. A secondary reason was the emergence of Runet at a particular point in Russian history (according to different sources, simultaneously, or following, the collapse of the USSR) and in a particular Russian cultural context of literaturecentrism.
(Source: Author's introduction)