ABSTRACT
Igor' Irt'enev's (2007) ironic verse оп getting addicted to the Russian internet, designated Ьу the typical abbreviation dot.ru, summarizes the symbolic meaning and the practical significance of networked communication environments for Russian writers. The poetic dedication characterizes the attachment of the Russian creative class to the Runet as ап efficient publication technology, а captivating communication network and а new public sphere. In its intensity, this attachment is interpreted ambivalendy, in positive as well as in negative terms. Such а paradoxical identification with the literary-and political-culture of the web is rather соттоп among the runetchiki, а popular neologism for the internet professionals and digital bohemia. An especially insightful case is the poet, writer and journalist Dmitrii Bykov, who polemicizes against "the Runet" Ьу describing it as а place where "programmers, grads, moms, and dads" are given the power to judge aesthetic works according to their individual likings (Bykov 2005: 66). For that reason, the "professional" writer Bykov spontaneously regrets having Ьееп Ьоrn in the "most reading country of the world." Не also compares life оп the Rulinet-the "Russian Literary internet"- with popular novels Ьу Fyodor Dostoevsky (ibid.: 64-5): "In fact, it would Ье
по great exaggeration to say that it was Fedor Мikhailovich who invented the Rulinet ... 150 years before it actually appeared." While Bykov fundamentally admires the work of Russia's famous novelist, the analogy here is in по way positive. It is Dostoevsky's bored, cynical, malicious "underground тап" who, according to Bykov is today reincarnated in the ordinary Russian user, with his cultural inferiority complex and literary ambitiousness.
