It was suggested that the most important opportunity provided by the Internet is the ability to practice democracy. There are two main trends in the Russian political landscape, as far as e-participation is concerned. First is the growth of political awareness and concern especially among the young population which promoted the bottom-up selforganizing e-participation. In the absence of censorship, the Internet is increasingly used as a platform for bottom-up political organizing in the face of centralized control of other media and lack of «official» e-participation mechanisms capable to consider citizens' input or to enable dialectical discussion on political issues. The second trend - is the increasing attention paid at the official government level to e-democracy development. Nevertheless the lack of institutional involvement and support alongside other negative factors of government-society relations might become a serious obstacle for successful enactment of e-participation. The goal of this paper is to explore the potential of e-participation in Russia for increasing public involvement of young citizens in decision-making, taking into account current conditions and historical legacy. We approach the problem by examining the ability of top-down and bottom-up e-participation mechanisms to overcome the current obstacles preventing young citizens from engaging in conventional participation mechanisms.