The Red Web (book)
| Company type | Non-fiction book |
|---|---|
| Industry | Publishing |
| Founded | 2015 |
| Founder | Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan |
| Products | Book |
The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015) is a non-fiction work authored by Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan. This English-language book investigates the evolution of surveillance technologies in Russia, tracing developments from the early days of the internet through to the modern digital era.
Content
This publication chronicles the significant conflict over the future direction of the Internet, highlighting Russia's enduring tradition of authoritarian control over information from Soviet times to the present day. Central to the narrative is the Russian surveillance framework known as SORM (Sistema Operativno-Rozysknikh Meropriyatiy), which has enabled the FSB to access internet communications covertly since 1998.
Selections from the book have been featured in prominent media outlets such as The Guardian, Buzzfeed, Business Insider, Foreign Policy, Motherboard, The Daily Beast, and Slate.
Reception
On September 2, 2015, Buzzfeed released an excerpt entitled "How Edward Snowden Inadvertently Helped Vladimir Putin's Internet Crackdown" from The Red Web. Shortly after, Edward Snowden was awarded the Bjornson prize by the Norwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression via videoconference while in Russia. During this event, Per Anders Johansen, Aftenposten’s Moscow correspondent, questioned Snowden about Russia’s internet restrictions mentioned in the excerpt. Snowden described these measures as a "mistake," condemning the Russian government's growing dominance over online freedoms and personal speech as fundamentally flawed.
The Red Web earned recognition as one of Library Journal’s Best Books of 2015 and was also listed among NPR’s Best Books of that year.