Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the topic of mobilising citizens to combat the effects of the virus has become one of the leitmotifs in the Russian media's coverage of the crisis. Volunteer activity, both in the capital and the regions, remains a central topic in all news releases (on Channel One, Ren-TV, and also on regional channels). Volunteers are often called modern “Timurovites” (after the novel Timur and his Squad from 1940, by Arkady Gaidar, about a “good gang” of Soviet village kids who do good deeds), but the question of exactly who will organise them into a “team”, and how, is by no means the least important.
The “Portal of Good”
The parallel between today's volunteers and Arkady Gaidar’s heroes can help us analyse volunteer movements, especially when it comes to self-organisation through online technologies. Timur's gang used a steering wheel which sent signals through rope wires. Depending on the number of turns, different team members could be called upon. Similarly, today's digital platforms are “steering wheels” at the centre of a network. Today, the wheel is increasingly in the hands of the authorities. The Russian ecosystem of volunteering and mutual assistance that has arisen around COVID-19 is characterised by a marked predominance of digital platforms with some relation to the state, and by the crowding out of independent projects.
