Russian Plans To Replace Wikipedia: Echoes Of Russia And America’s Troubled History

Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that Wikipedia be replaced with a Russian version seems like a patriotic attempt to promote Russian scholarship. It also offers a reminder of the way that limited access to information has historically contributed to tension between Russia and the U.S.

Speaking to the Russian Language Council at a Kremlin meeting November 5, Putin said of Wikipedia, “It would be better to replace it with the Big Russian New Encyclopaedia in electronic form,” Ria Novosti reported. “This will in any case be reliable information in a good contemporary form.”

The key words are “replace” and “reliable.”

“Replace” suggests that the new electronic version of the Big Russian Encyclopaedia will be designed to be consulted instead of Wikipedia, not as well as.

Kremlin plans to cut Russia off from the internet

“Reliable” seems innocuous enough. Isn’t that what reference books and websites are supposed to be? But when you pause to think about recent Russian legislation allowing the country to be cut off from the internet (for defensive purposes, “in an emergency”, according to the Kremlin), critics may start to wonder if that could mean promoting a single, government-friendly, interpretation of events.

The Russian Wikipedia started in 2001, according to the online encyclopaedia’s own page. Wikipedia, referring to Alexa Internet rankings, says that its Russian version has tended to be the most visited after its English site.

The Russian plans for a replacement are not completely new. Ria Novosti pointed out that in September 1.7 billion roubles ($26.7 million) had been budgeted for Russia’s answer to the world’s biggest online encyclopaedia. The project is to have the support of the editors of the Big Russian Encyclopaedia, which already has its own website.  

For most of the twentieth century, the Big Soviet Encyclopaedia was the last word in Marxist-Leninist interpretation of world events, science, and history. The end of the Soviet Union in 1991 meant a new name was needed.  

The Big Russian Encyclopaedia’s site has a link to a copy of the 2002 decree authorizing the work to go ahead. It is signed by Russia’s then president: Vladimir Putin.

Competition for information

Whatever form the proposed replacement for Russian Wikipedia takes, it will have to compete with other information sources.

Perhaps there is a pattern here. In the last decade, the Russian government did not like some of the international media coverage it was receiving. It created Russia Today, now shortened to RT, to acquaint “international audiences with a Russian viewpoint on major global events.”

In Soviet times, editors in Moscow would sometimes alter definitions in dictionaries produced in the west, especially definitions of sensitive words like “socialism” or “capitalism.”

Today, provided they have the internet, users can look elsewhere for alternative answers.

That was not always possible, but it is important that, for the sake of international understanding, it remains so.

A forgotten story of American-Soviet cooperation

A new book, The Russian Job, by Douglas Smith, shows why. It tells the story of a massive American effort in the 1920s to alleviate famine in the Soviet Union. Countless lives were saved. This kind of cooperation was not to last as the century wore on. Instead, the episode has largely been forgotten–something Smith's book aims to correct.

As a review in The Economist noted,  the American Relief Administration was subsequently accused in the Soviet Union of  “spying and wrecking activities" and of "supporting counter-revolutionary elements.” That kind of interpretation was both created by, and contributed to, Cold War tensions between Washington and Moscow.

Whose phrase? The Big Soviet Encyclopaedia’s.