A unique documentary with cultural and historical significance. Dozens of interviews + archival videos and photos (for example, Nossik is no longer with us), put together in 7 episodes, each of which is a whole story about one of the milestones of the Russian Internet. The main people, phenomena and conflicts, achievements and disappointments, the metamorphoses of the heroes under the weight of all this.
Soviet engineers with their innovations went into business and created (with varying success for themselves and their ideas) the infrastructure of the future Runet. Meanwhile, a group of young crazy “padons” first brought humor and banter to the network, then almost in a drunken frenzy founded the now popular Internet media and a provider with unlimited rates, and then, already being serious guys in costumes, ran through the trenches on the basis of politics and censorship. There were wars of social networks and blogs, the rise of games and YouTube, the arrival of opposition politics on the Internet and the reaction of the state. All the way from the uncharted territory of complete anarchy to the habitual habitat of millions of people, but already under the gaze of Comrade Major.
There’s not exactly everything in the series that’s worth talking about (I’d be interested to see more technical details, services and technologies that would surprise many today). But it turned out pretty fat. I had a lot of fun and saw some pretty sudden things. Well, for example, did you know that the soloist of “Hands up” Zhukov was related to the first Russian online games? Or can you imagine that somewhere there is a video of a young half-naked geek Artemy Lebedev sitting at a computer with a cigarette in his hands and making a website? Or imagine that Soviet scientists once established a network of links with Western scientists, and the KGB was satisfied with the simple explanation that it was a “scientific experiment.”
Andrey Loshak, thank you for your work. It will definitely be seen in 20 years, just because of the uniqueness of the material. The series is reminiscent of Parfyonov’s Nadni project in its ability to combine culture, politics and history.