Saying Goodbye to Anton Nossik, Godfather of the Russian Internet

Anton Nossik, a founding father of the Russian Internet, successful media entrepreneur, and popular blogger, died of a heart attack on July 9 while staying at a friend's summer house outside Moscow. He was 51 years old.

Often referred to as the “Godfather of the Russian Internet,” Nossik founded or led influential news websites Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru, Vesti.ru, and NTV.ru (now NewsRu.com), and helped popularize blogging in Russia.

Nossik, who described himself as the “planet's first Russian blogger,” helped sound the alarm as the Putin regime began to crack down on the RuNet after allowing the Internet to operate relatively freely during the first 13 years of his tenure.

He was a tireless advocate for free speech in Russia, sometimes getting himself in trouble for his own firebrand politics: Last year, Nossik was fined500,000 rubles, or $8,000 for calling for Syria to be “wiped from the face of the earth.”

In the hours since his death, Russian bloggers, journalists, and media personalities have shared their memories of Nossik, whom they remember as a dogged worker who built the RuNet from the ground up, helping turn it into, in his own words, “Russia’s only territory of unlimited free speech.”