Modern Music

Since the late Soviet times Russia has experienced another wave of Western cultural influence, which led to the development of many previously unknown phenomena in the Russian culture. The most vivid example, perhaps, is the Russian rock music, which takes its roots both in the Western rock and roll and heavy metal, and in traditions of the Russian bards of Soviet era, like Vladimir Vysotsky and Bulat Okudzhava. Saint-Petersburg (former Leningrad), Yekaterinburg (former Sverdlovsk) and Omsk became the main centers of development of the rock music. Popular Russian rock groups include Mashina Vremeni, DDT, Aquarium, Alisa, Kino, Nautilus Pompilius, Aria, Grazhdanskaya Oborona, Splean and Korol i Shut. At the same time Russian pop music developed from what was known in the Soviet times as estrada into sucessful industry, with some performers gaining international recognition, like t.A.T.u. in the West, who have been said to be the most influential artists to ever come out of Russia, or Vitas in China. Lubeh is a very popular and unique group, harmoniously combining the elements of Western rock and roll, traditional Russian folk music and military bard music, featuring a number of rock attributes but often performing on the pop scenes.

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Russian unofficial Symbols

Matryoshka doll is a recognizable symbol of Russia, while the towers of Moscow Kremlin and Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow are main Russia's architectural symbols. Cheburashka is a symbol of Russian national Olympic team. Mary, Saint Nicholas, Saint Andrew, Saint George, Saint Alexander Nevsky, Saint Sergius of Radonezh, Saint Seraphim of Sarov are Russia's saints. Chamomile is a flower that Russians often associate with their Motherland, while birch is a national tree. Russian bear is an animal often associated with Russia, though this image has Western origin and Russians themselves do not consider it as a special symbol. The native Russian national personification is Mother Russia, sometimes called Mother Motherland.

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Russian Internet

Originating from Russian scientific community and telecommunication industries, a specific Russian culture of using the Internet has been establishing since the early 1990s. In the second half of 1990s, the term Runet was coined to call the segment of Internet written or understood in the Russian language. Whereas the Internet "has no boundaries", "Russian Internet" (online communications in the Russian language) can not be localized solely to the users residing in the Russian Federation as it includes Russian-speaking people from all around the world. This segment includes millions of users in other ex-USSR countries, Israel and others abroad diasporas.

With the introduction of the Web, many social and cultural events found reflections within the Russian Internet society. Various online communities formed, and the most popular one grew out of the Russian-speaking users of the California-based blogging platform LiveJournal (which was completely bought out in December 2007 by Russian firm SUP Fabrik). In January 2008 a LiveJournal blog of the "3rd statesman" Sergey Mironov had appeared and he was shortly followed by the new President Dmitry Medvedev who opened a personal video blog which was later also expanded with a LiveJournal version.

As of late, there are scores of websites offering Russian language content including mass media, e-commerce, search engines and so on. Particularly notorious are the "Russian Hackers". Russian web design studios, software and web-hosting enterprises offer a variety of services, and the results form a sort of national digital culture. E-commerce giants such as Google and Microsoft have their Russian branches. In September 2007, the national domain .ru passed the milestone of a million domain names.

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