While Russian computer scientists are notorious for their interference in the 2016 US presidential election, they are ubiquitous on Wall Street and coveted by international IT firms and often perceive themselves as the present manifestation of the past glory of Soviet scientific prowess. Drawing on over three hundred in-depth interviews, the contributors to From Russia with Code trace the practices, education, careers, networks, migrations, and lives of Russian IT professionals at home and abroad, showing how they function as key figures in the tense political and ideological environment of technological innovation in post-Soviet Russia. Among other topics, they analyze coders' creation of both transnational communities and local networks of political activists; Moscow's use of IT funding to control peripheral regions; brain drain and the experiences of coders living abroad in the United Kingdom, United States, Israel, and Finland; and the possible meanings of Russian computing systems in a heterogeneous nation and industry. Highlighting the centrality of computer scientists to post-Soviet economic mobilization in Russia, the contributors offer new insights into the difficulties through which a new entrepreneurial culture emerges in a rapidly changing world.

Contributors. Irina Antoschyuk, Mario Biagioli, Ksenia Ermoshina, Marina Fedorova, Andrey Indukaev, Alina Kontareva, Diana Kurkovsky, Vincent Lepinay, Alexandra Masalskaya, Daria Savchenko, Liubava Shatokhina, Alexandra Simonova, Ksenia Tatarchenko, Zinaida Vasilyeva, Dimitrii Zhikharevich

About the Author
Mario Biagioli is Distinguished Professor of Law, Science and Technology Studies, and History at the University of California, Davis.

Vincent Lepinay is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Medialab at Sciences Po (Paris).

Reviews
"The most striking achievement of this in so many ways outstanding book rests in its ethnographic accounts of the RCS [Russian Computer Scientists] as a new type of power-knowledge intellectual.... The book is easy on technical language and should be accessible to a wide readership beyond Russian studies." -- Dusan I. Bjelic * Slavic Review *
"From Russia with Code...is both timely and unique.... Biagioli and Lepinay's volume demonstrates that IT professionals both in Russia and abroad have the potential to disrupt the Russian state's current conception of sovereignty...and to redefine the relationship between the state, its citizens, and the international community." -- Alexandra V. Orlova * Surveillance & Society *
"This book is a valuable read for those with an interest in computer programming and high-tech cultures outside the United States, in post-Soviet ethnography, and in the elusive myth of the Russian programmer." -- Adam Kriesberg * Information & Culture *
"From Russia with Code offers a rich and insightful view into the Russian IT sector and brings welcome scholarly attention to a population that has been overrepresented in popular journalism, but less well attended to in scholarship.... This accessibly written, engaging, and insightful volume will be of interest to broad audiences." -- Julie Hemment * Anthropos *
"This is a superb collection of articles on post-Soviet IT by highly accomplished scholars." -- Barbara Walker * Technology and Culture *
"From Russia with Code appears as essential reading for those interested in STS, cultural history, transnational migrations, and the sociology, history, and anthropology of Russian-speaking information science and information technology. . . . I am confident that the complex, grounded realities of From Russia with Code take the first necessary step on a path toward understanding how Russian-speakers coded the world." -- Benjamin Peters * Soviet and Post-Soviet Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9781478002994
Author Mario Biagioli
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 499g