№ 1 - 2002
Peskov D.N.
Internet in Russian Politics: Utopia and Reality

«Internet is a Utopia - a place that there isn’t», - the author asserts. The paradox consists in that the Internet, while being Utopian by its essence, is nevertheless able to influence this very existing reality and to change it. In D.N.Peskov’s article, the global Web is treated as medium, or milieu, of various actors’ interaction in the «political field». Attention is concentrated so as to accentuate the possibilities the Web provides them and the use they make of these possibilities. The author attaches especial importance to the functions the actors realize in political dimensions of the Internet, because changes at the functional level in politics, in his opinion, are bound to entail not only radical reconstruction of the traditional «institutional design» of the whole political system, but also transformation of people’s political consciousness and behaviour.