Almost a year ago Lilia (mathemagenic.com) had a post about why it's hard to blog in Russian. Among other things she mentioned the language of one's own professional community and the difficulties of writing for a non-existent audience. Clearly, I have the same problems. The language of my professional actitivities is English, the audience for sharing and exchanging is mostly English-speaking.

Nevertheless, I decided to start a journal in Russian. The idea behind my blog (journal?) in Russian is trivial: I want to keep up with what's happening on Russian internet (or Runet as we call it). And I hope that some kind of a community with similar interests, however small or invisible it may be, is out there.

I named it (simply and unpretentiously :) "Publichnaya kartoteka", which can be translated as "A public index card file." The word public ("publichnaya") in Russian contains the word "personal" (lichnaya), so it's a kind of public-personal card file. The idea of taking notes on index cards, filing and organizing them became very special to me because of two things:
- "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco
- Nabokov's method of writing on index cards and keeping them in a shoe-box (I read it in some interview with him but some people think it's Nabokov's evasive teasing)
Anyway, the medium might have its own effect but the inspiration comes from good old index cards. We'll see how it goes.