[Renee Montagne:] And now a look at the evolving media Russian style. Last summer, Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev joined the tweeting masses with his own Twitter page, called Kremlin Russia. And almost immediately another Twitter feed appeared: Kermlin Russia. It's a satirical version whose faux presidential tweets are actually the work of two young Russians dubbed Masha and Sasha. With 58,000 followers and growing, it's a bit of a sensation on the Russian language Web. Julia Ioffe, the Moscow correspondent for Foreign Policy magazine, wrote about Kermlin Russia for the latest issue. Good morning.
[Ms. Julia Ioffe:] Good morning, Renee.
[Renee Montagne:] So which lines have you been finding the funniest?
[Ms. Julia Ioffe:] The ones that just state the most simply just how greedy government officials are. For example, when a list surfaced in a Russian newspaper of all of the bureaucrat's children who have at age 22 these very profitable businesses, Kermlin tweeted something like: Local governors need to have more children so that we can have more successful young entrepreneurs.
[Renee Montagne:] When you imagine him sitting writing, Dmitry Medvedev, sitting in his office writing this, well, it adds to the absurdity but it adds to the fun.
[Ms. Julia Ioffe:] Absolutely. Medvedev's character is a little absurd. And I think the reason that a lot of these tweets are funny is that they are so blunt and that really echoes a kind of brazenness with which everything is done the brazenness with which government funds just disappear. Recently they've discovered that the one kilometer of roads, which they're building in preparation for the 2014 Olympics, it's the most expensive in the world.
[Renee Montagne:] And there's actually a tweet.
[Ms. Julia Ioffe:] Yes. It goes something along the lines of: In order to save 327 billion rubles, we've decided to move the Olympics to Vancouver, where everything is already ready.
[Renee Montagne:] You write that this Twitter feed is continuing a long tradition in Russia.
[Ms. Julia Ioffe:] That's right. The most recent example of this is something called anekdoty. They are short can jokes that were just kind of launched into society and were repeated over and over and over again. It was a way of sharing information and analysis when the media was completely controlled by the then-Soviet state.
[Renee Montagne:] So a joke one of the jokes would be what?
[Ms. Julia Ioffe:] For example, you know, when Brezhnev was still in power, he and the ruling class they were the octogenarians, they were extremely old so one of the jokes was asking why one bureaucrat would go to meet foreign leaders at the airport, whereas one would wait at the Kremlin for them. And the answer was, well, this one operates on battery power and the other one plugs into the wall.
[Renee Montagne:] I do see similarities. Let me just ask you kind of a straightforward question. Tweeting is often jaunty and light and certainly ironic. How much influence do you think it's really having?
[Ms. Julia Ioffe:] It has a lot of influence because it's become a steam valve for a lot the people who are the most active thinkers and readers and followers of the news, who follow the details of government corruption and ineptitude and who are deeply frustrated by it. There's a concept in Russian literature called laughing through tears. It's a very necessary comic relief, because usually the system is very inert and very difficult to change, even by the people who ostensibly matter.
[Renee Montagne:] Julia Ioffe is the Moscow correspondent for Foreign Policy magazine. Her article on the Twitter feed Kermlin Russia is in the latest issue. Thank you very much for joining us.
[Ms. Julia Ioffe:] Oh, thank you, Renee.
[Renee Montagne:] The Kremlin won't say whether Medvedev follows the faux Twitter feed. But Masha and Sasha are certain he's aware of it and possibly influenced. The Russian president recently changed his Twitter account from Kremlin Russia to Medvedev Russia. You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.