Hi! I'm usually a lurking subscriber, but.

[LJ is] basically Russia's only free press
No. No, it's not. Unfortunately, synecdochic's post is very misleading in that respect, if not outright erroneous. There is a huge dissident/anti-government community in Russia, present in all media; LJ is only a small part of it. (To the best of my knowledge, neither had anyone been killed for spreading dissent on LJ; cf. the wiki.)