A state-sponsored online encyclopedia that is a clone of the original Russian Wikipedia, but completely rewritten to avoid data or bullshit that might cast a shadow on the government. Here is the Putin-era Wikipedia. In Russia there is already a version of the largest and most consulted online encyclopedia. It’s called Ruwiki, and it’s a translated and enriched version of the original, which follows the same rigorous editing rules as other countries. The “state” version calls Ruviki, so it loses the w, but puts “ruwiki” in its URL and copies all Russian-language Wikipedia entries, rigorously edited to comply with Russian laws. The new articles exclude mentions of “foreign agents,” the Russian government designation for any person or entity that expresses opinions about the government and is supported, financially or otherwise, by an outside nation.
Wikimedia RU, the Russian-language chapter of the nonprofit organization that runs Wikipedia, was forced to shut down at the end of 2023 due to political pressure from the war in Ukraine. Vladimir Medeyko, the former head of the chapter who now runs Ruviki, told Novaya Gazeta Europe in July that he believed Wikipedia had problems with “reliability and neutrality.”
Medeyko first announced plans to copy and censor the 1.9 million Russian-language Wikipedia articles in June. The goal, she said at the time, was to edit them so that the information was “reliable” as a source for all Russian users. The independent Bumaga agency reported in August that around 110 articles on the war in Ukraine were missing in full, while others were severely edited. Ruviki also excludes articles about reports of torture in prisons and scandals of representatives of the Russian government.
Graphic designer Constantine Konovalov calculated the number of characters changed between Wikipedia RU and Ruviki articles on the same topics, and found that there were 205,000 changes in articles on free speech; 158,000 changes to human rights articles; 96,000 changes to articles on political prisoners; and 71,000 changes to articles about censorship in Russia. He wrote in a post on X that the censorship was “straight out of a 1984 novel.” Interestingly, Ruviki’s article on George Orwell’s 1984 completely omits the Ministry of Truth, which is the novel’s main propaganda body dealing with governing “truth” in the country.