Reflections on the Threshold of the Digital Collective Farm

This publication was prepared by the media project “Country and World — Sakharov Review” (the project's Telegram channel — “Country and World”).

The Moscow region is one of the first four where Max is being introduced by official order; later the practice will be extended to the rest of Russia. Users are expected to be able to certify documents with electronic signatures in the messenger, use the app to verify identity, age, entitlement to benefits and education, and to access government services. All “educational services and chats currently used by educational institutions of all levels” are also planned to be moved to the messenger. Meanwhile, experts warn that the new state messenger resembles an aggressive spyware program implanted into the user's device.

Once, digitalization meant progress, integration into the global world. Now the reverse process has begun: the most powerless (students and public sector employees) are being driven into a digital collective farm. Our generation, born in the 1970s, was lucky: we witnessed a rapid liberation from all forms of state control. The Internet, and then social networks, seemed the ultimate achievement of this freedom. But, as they say, nothing good lasts forever. What was supposed to free us once and for all from the state's all-seeing eye is now becoming a tool of enslavement.

The introduction of the state messenger aims to push out uncontrolled WhatsApp and Telegram from the Russian market.

Another attack on freedom of speech—in this case, private correspondence—did not cause panic in Russia. And even this lack of panic is not surprising: it was all heading this way.

Strangely enough, the recent pandemic mythology about “chip implants” and “5G tower radiation” now works in favor of the Kremlin, and the average person thinks roughly: “We've long been monitored through networks—if not those, then these ones, what's the difference.”

“What's the difference” is a motto of weary anti-progressivism, a widespread catastrophic mindset. “It will only get worse”: all tightenings are accepted as inevitable because there's “nowhere to run.”

What should thoughtful people do in this situation?

A few historical parallels need to be kept in mind to avoid despair.

Today's digital control (modeled after China's WeChat, which combines bloggers, online stores, and government services—said to have once impressed Putin) has, as before, two goals. A tactical one (to expose traitors and dissenters) and a strategic one—to inform about public moods, what angers or pleases the population, etc.

In essence, the Russian state did the same in the 19th and 20th centuries. On a different, of course, technical level, but with the same totality, involving many means and people. All these efforts did not save the supreme power from collapse in 1917 or the 1980s. The hunt for dissenters in Russia traditionally involves fabrications: modern practice shows that security services prefer to look for sedition under the streetlight or to expose imaginary extremists.

The lack of experience with freedoms and the presence of a long repressive history “helps” only in one way: mimicry and pretense are in our people's blood, regardless of age.

In Soviet society, even children knew the phrase: “this is not a phone call.” Over time, people will learn to use the state messenger to feed false information to the controlling authorities. A mutual game will begin: who will deceive whom (in the spirit of “I know that you know that she knows”…).

The Russian language offers rich possibilities to hide one's thoughts, mislead the “Comrade Major”—through allegories, hints, and ellipses. By the way, to decipher these tricks, intellectuals are needed on “the other side”—philologists and other masters of words. And, as experience over the last twenty years shows, this is a problem. Moreover, any control system in Russia is accompanied by corruption. Regarding Max's verification, they say it's strict, but there is already information that schoolchildren rent out their accounts to scammers for money.

Strategically, the control system also protects no one. In Russian history, everything happens “in three days,” as Vasily Rozanov wrote. In a country where parliament and parties do not function, meaning there is no natural representation of public opinion from the bottom up, this function falls to the security services. They listen, record, and monitor public moods, then report to their superiors. Those, in turn, bring everything in folders to the chief boss.

But the system is corrupted morally as well; therefore, the folders usually contain what the leadership likes to read (a vivid example is the security services' reports to Putin about Ukraine's inability to resist before the invasion). The totalitarian power hears only what it wants to hear: “everything is under control,” “not even a mouse will slip through”—and so on until the next avalanche appears, as usual, “from nowhere.” The result is a huge pile of papers or electronic wiretaps gathering dust on servers (covered, so to speak, with digital dust).

Certainly, nothing is worse or more harmful than the belief that “the system will eventually consume itself.” Such a stance provokes inaction and apathy. But one corrosive trend is still worth mentioning.

Let's mentally put ourselves in the inquisitors' place. The current system of fear is Stalinist, that is, irrational: it is based on the idea that “in principle, nothing is allowed.” This suits the Kremlin, but the population cannot live in such a state permanently.

Where are the boundaries between forbidden and permitted? What can be debated, and what cannot? — this question will arise sooner or later in people's minds. There cannot be total “no”—there must be at least some “yes!,” as said in the legendary skit by the group “Litsedei” in 1985.

Early Putin occasionally allowed “letting off steam,” creating short “thaws.” But after 2022, the system of prohibitions literally went off the rails. It cannot be rolled back because this contradicts its internal logic. The system will only tighten, moving relentlessly in one direction, compressing the spring tighter and tighter.

Knowing this does not make it easier—how many more ruined lives. But politically, it is indeed “easier” because it removes false hopes, thereby radicalizing society. There is no turning back, as they say, it's all or nothing. And this is already fertile ground for entirely different social moods.

The desire to totally control people's words and thoughts in the 21st century shows that this plague—freedom of thought—still frightens the authorities. Accordingly, the price of free thinking rises. Uncensored words are once again expensive and scarce. Free information requires effort—while propaganda costs nothing.

The Kremlin, however, today hopes it has found Archimedes' lever: it intends to wean people off the temptation of free thought starting from childhood—from kindergarten, from school, using the same state messenger. In this way, the Kremlin challenges human nature itself, as in Orwell's or Huxley's novels. Is this utopia feasible or not? — one of the key questions of the 21st century, and in this contest, each of us can participate not only as an observer.