Putin

But these were relatively small problems that were relatively easily finessed in that lax and open period of the Russian Internet. In fact, the years between the founding of VK in 2006 and 2013, when its forced sale to Putin’s cronies took place, could be called the Russian Internet’s “seven fat years.” (Is a footnote now necessary to explain that this is a biblical reference, not one to obesity issues?)

Things began to sour in late 2011 and early 2012, when, summoned by social media, hundreds of thousands streamed into the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg to protest the rigged parliamentary elections and Putin’s return to the presidency after allowing Medvedev to pose as president while Putin retained all real power as prime minister, an arrangement that observed the letter of the Constitution while mocking its spirit.

Putin viewed those demonstrations against the background of the Arab Spring, which exploded from the same volatile mix of idealistic youth, social media, and high-tech gadgets. That quickly led to Mubarak’s overthrow in February 2011 and Qaddafi’s in late August. The sight of a member of his elite club of World Leaders dragged through the streets and then murdered did not sit well with Putin.

And the Americans were playing what Russia saw as their usual devious hypocritical games—abandoning some leaders, toppling others, always in the name of a democracy that never quite seemed to come or, if it did but produced the wrong results, such as an Islamist president in Egypt, that had to be repudiated at once.

In another perverse paradox, it was the ugly turn of events in 2011 that would inspire Durov with one of his most libertarian ideas. In December 2011 an OMON (SWAT) team was banging at Durov’s door demanding that he block access to opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Web site. Wishing to consult with his brother, Durov realized that he did not have any safe and secure way to do so. And thus was born the idea for Telegram, the encrypted communication app that he would create in 2013. In 2011 Durov still felt free enough to defy the Kremlin; he refused to close down Navalny’s Web site and tweeted a photo of a dog in a hoodie sticking out its tongue. He could still get away with such things in 2012, probably because Putin was more occupied with putting the screws on the actual opposition leaders rather than on those who allowed them to communicate freely.

The swing year was 2013. In August, after weeks in bureaucratic limbo, Edward Snowden left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport and accepted asylum in Russia rather than risk any further international travel. Durov, who called Snowden “my hero,” immediately offered him a job, which Snowden declined. In a gust of pro-Russian effusiveness, Durov said: “In such moments one feels proud of one’s country and regret over the course taken by the United States—a country betraying the principles it was once built on.”

In a perfect piece of chessboard symmetry, within a matter of months Durov the anti-Putin would be forced into exile and end up in the United States, working in secrecy and freedom in Buffalo, New York, on Telegram, his secure communication app. Putin had apparently decided that he didn’t need both Durov and Snowden on his side of the chessboard, especially with Durov offering Snowden work and lionizing him. Snowden’s value was not a matter of any intelligence bonanza—his value was purely symbolic, i.e., political—his presence would be a constant mocking of the United States’ impotence. In the meantime Putin’s cronies seized financial control of VK in a buyout that left Durov with something like $300 million to $500 million. That was money that could not be spent in prison, as Durov was reminded when a case of his driving over a policeman’s foot was concocted against him, the fact that Durov didn’t drive was hardly an obstacle.

Durov, now a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis, leads a nomadic life, traveling from hotel to hotel, country to country, with a small band of devoted techies who helped him perfect Telegram. Though it quickly gained 100 million users a month, Telegram has yet to show a profit and costs Durov something like $1 million a month. Among the hundred million users of Telegram’s secure communication system were the ISIS jihadis who left 129 people dead in the November 2015 Paris attacks.