Russia's Presidential Library announced Friday that it plans to create an alternative version of Wikipedia in order to provide more detailed information about the country.
The new encyclopedia will provide an objective overview of Russia and will "accurately present the country and its population, the diversity of the state, and the national system of Russia," said the Presidential Library's release. The content will be available to users from "any Internet access point."
While Wikipedia has pages dedicated to nearly every region or major Russian city, an "analysis of this resource has shown that it does not have enough detailed and reliable information about Russian regions and the life of the country," according to Russia's Presidential Library.
Along with documents on the Russian territory, the new encyclopedia resource will also feature a "virtual museum of regional development," said Alexander Vershinin, director general of the Presidential Library.
The library's statement said that 50,000 books and archive documents from 27 libraries had already been acquired for the alternative Wikipedia, reported ABC.
The interesting move may be more easily understood within the context of Vladimir Putin's comments from April, when he called the Internet a "CIA project."
According to Putin, the Internet was created by, and is still being developed by, the CIA. His solution is a Russian-run alternative, reported The Guardian.
In August, Russia began requiring all bloggers in Russia with more than 3,000 followers to register with Moscow's mass media regulatory agency and has asked that they conform to rules applied to larger media outlets, reported ABC, also noting that since February, state authorities have not been blocking websites without first obtaining a court order.
However, Putin isn't alone in his distrust for the Internet. In light of revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden, other countries such as Germany and Brazil have discussed the idea of breaking up the internet as well.
