Slon The Slon.ru website was launched on 18 May 2009. The website's name Slon () is a reference to the
blind men and an elephant parable, in which blind people disagreed about what the elephant looked like. Slon authors stated that its mission is to show "the whole elephant" to its readers. The first editor-in-chief and executive director of Slon.ru was the Russian journalist and publisher
Leonid Bershidsky. Among the first employees of Slon.ru were Russian journalists ,
Olga Romanova, former deputy editor-in-chief of
SmartMoney magazine Yuri Granovsky and former editor-in-chief of
Russky Newsweek magazine Dmitry Kuznets. The main shareholders are Russian media managers
Natalya Sindeyeva and . Since the summer of 2014, the website has been working on a paid subscription basis.
Republic On 6 November 2016, it was announced that the website had changed its name to Republic. The change also included a new design and three additional sections; the sphere of interest of the magazine has expanded to the topics of science and technology. In August 2016, , a Russian journalist and former deputy editor-in-chief of
RBC, became the editor-in-chief of the magazine. On 15 October 2021, Moscow Digital Media was labelled as a '
foreign agent' in Russia. In response, Kolezev said that he did not know why the Russian authorities decided to do it. He also said that Republic does not have foreign financing: "... it only exists thanks to subscribers' money".
Awards In 2010, the website won first place in the Information Site of the Year category in the (Russian Online TOP) competition. In 2010, the diary published on the Slon.ru website won the online voting in the Best Blog nomination in
The Best of Blogs (BOBs) competition. In January 2017, Republic journalist Siranush Sharoyan received the
Redkollegia media award for her article "Black Cash. How a Trillion Dollars Was Withdrawn from the Country in 25 Years. The History of the Russian Banking System - Based on Criminal Cases". == Chief editors ==