Exciting news for Russian Interneters! Tomorrow, your president, Dmitry Medvedev, will join LiveJournal, the MySpace-like blog platform that took Russia by storm in the early part of this century and has yet to let go. Starting tomorrow, the President – the President! – will mingle in your lowly mingling places and discuss with you your silly thoughts on politics! On the Internet! The President!

He may be the President of A Big, Important World Power, but this is quite a natural progression for Medvedev. He is, you see, an Internet fiend himself. To mark the New Year, for example, he launched a blog (blog.kremlin.ru). And he may not have, well, blogged per se and his responses to comments may have been just snippets culled from his official speeches, but! How many leaders of formerly resurgent countries could claim to have a blog at all? Right. And before that, in October 2008, Medvedev blazed a trail for vloggers, confidently turning to the camera – he had been working on issues of international importance when the camera seemed to ambush him at his computer where he was doing something he had to quickly click out of (solitaire?) – and launching into a stiff soliloquy on global security. The Russian-language web exploded in lively discussion: what was on Medvedev’s desktop? Was he reading Lenta.ru, an unofficial news site? And who took that lovely cityscape with the setting sun?

And now, finally, Medvedev decided to join the people’s platform, LiveJournal.

Well, kind of. He won’t have a nickname, you see, just a boring user name that will consist of some combination of first name, patronymic, and last name. And don’t expect any candid vacation shots, either. The Presidential userpic will just be a thumbnail of an official portrait. Oh, and the President won’t have a user profile so you won't be able to actually “friend” him, and, oh, um, yeeeaaah… it won’t actually be a blog or a LiveJournal, but, rather, a “community.” Don’t worry, though. All that means is that the moderator – Kremlin flack – can set all kinds of fun parameters. For example: only a select list of commenters can comment publicly, or the moderator can hide comments he doesn’t like, but, you know, Medvedev’s on Live Journal! Well, actually, he won’t be reading it at all, the flack say. He is, you know, the President. He’s busy. And another thing: the forum will be subject to similar restrictions as the Presidential blog, which means users will have to register, wait a couple days to have their registration validated, then wait some more while their comments are vetted by said Kremlin flack and posted when the moment is totally, totally over.

So, um, yay?

Blog D_Medvedev [Gazeta.ru (in Russian)]