The Kremlin’s Version of Russia Without Fools

January 26, 2012 by John K. Yi

Dmitry Medvedev with Sergei Lavrov in New York. Image via Kremlin’s Press Office

It’s a new website that seems befitting of the angry mood amongst Russians over the last month’s Duma elections and the coming March Presidential elections, which have all but promised the return of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin. Called “Russia Without Fools” (Rossiya Bez Durakov), the website begins with the following words:

Friends, everyday we are faced with stupid standards and laws, decisions far from elementary logic, and complex regulations and unexplainable restrictions…And so we personally offer to you a real opportunity to find and destroy specific stupidities.

This new web portal, which is currently in beta-version, encourages users to register and to make public stories of their local government, bureaucrats, or businesses that create nonsensical regulations and bureaucracy for the average Russian citizen. And while it seems like an internet project started by anti-Kremlin opposition groups, the website is actually the brainchild of President Medvedev’s “Big Government” initiative, which seeks to make more accessible and accountable Russia’s civil servants with its citizens.

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