But intoday’s Russia,Aleksei N. Navalny has managed to attract a vast audience with his Web site forinvestors, Navalny.ru, even as hetakes on big state-owned energy companies in his crusade against graft,kickbacks and bribery.

A34-year-old real estate lawyer by training, Mr. Navalny can reach as many as amillion unique visitors in a day with his digital samizdat, as happened lastfall with his scoop about embezzlement at Transneft, a state-run pipelinecompany.

Thatscheme, presented as a cautionary tale for those tempted to invest in Russianenergy stocks, described executives setting up a series of shell companies topose as contractors for Transneft’s project to build a 3,000-mile pipeline toChina. One shell, for example, was registered in the name of a Siberian man whohad lost his passport, according to the Nalvany report.

The postincluded an audit indicating that the contracting fraud had cost Transneft $4billion. Both Transneft and the government accounting office, whose documentsMr. Navalny said he leaked on his site, have denied the corruption claim.

But PrimeMinister Vladimir V. Putin took theposting seriously enough to ask for an investigation, which is still pending.

Mr.Navalny, whose fame and unabashed political ambitions are surely helped by hisblue-eyed good looks and acidic sense of humor, has clearly touched a nerve inRussian society. His blog appeals to Russians who wonder: if the country’s vastoil wealth is not trickling down to thepublic, where is it going?

“I do thisbecause I hate these people,” Mr. Navalny said gleefully of his Web postings,which take aim at those he describes as the self-dealing managers in the oiland natural gas business.

WithinRussia, Mr. Navalny’s celebrity “is growing almost as quickly as that of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange,” NikolaiPetrov, a fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a political affairs researchgroup, wrote in December. Mr. Petrov wrote thatMr. Navalny “represents a new generation of political activists, one who seesthe system’s vulnerabilities and targets his blows accordingly.”

A formeractivist in a liberal political party, Yabloko, Mr. Navalny says he willeventually run for public office. He now calls himself an advocate of therights of members of the Russian middle class — people who have invested in thestock market and who he says are losing money to corruption and mismanagement.

Stockownership here is tiny by the standards of the United States. Russians have opened726,000 brokerage accounts, representing about 0.5 percent of the population.

But thatnumber, and Mr. Navalny’s likely audience, is growing about 12 percent a month,according to Troika Dialog, a Moscowinvestment bank. Just as Americans seethed at wealthy bankers after the housingbubble burst, he said, Russians have started chafing at state companymismanagement during the oil boom.

“They seethat Gazprom does not pay a dividend,” hesaid, “but the company parking lot is full of Mercedes-Benz cars.”

Whilepotentially valuable to the owners of stocks and mutual funds,Mr. Navalny’s disclosures are not winning him friends in the executive suitesof the country’s big energy companies.

The chiefexecutive of Transneft, Nikolai Tokarev, a veteran of the Soviet K.G.B., hassuggested that Mr. Navalny is a shill for the CentralIntelligence Agency, ordered to smear the reputations of important Russiancompanies.

Nothing hasfollowed from these charges so far. Mr. Navalny, though, became so unnervedthat he gave his wife a list of phone numbers to call if he disappeared — otherlawyers, journalists and opposition politicians.

“They couldarrest me at any moment,” Mr. Navalny explained.

Indeed,after the Transneft documents were published, the government opened a criminalinvestigation against Mr. Navalny. It nominally has nothing to do with hisTransneft disclosures. Instead, it involves his supposedly giving badinvestment advice to a regional government several years ago, when he worked asan adviser to a local governor. That investigation, too, is still pending.

After thepipeline audit leak, men who identified themselves as security agents contactedclients of Mr. Navalny’s law practice, warning them against doing business withhim, Mr. Navalny said.

Mr. Navalnyhas held down his day job as a real estate lawyer alongside his prolific onlinewriting. He got his start in 2007 by suing Russian companies to forcedisclosure of accounting documents, using his standing as a minoritystockholder owning a few shares. He would then publish the disclosures on aLiveJournal blog, eventually building up a following. He started Navalny.rulast year.

He has fansamong Moscow financial analysts and bankers, in particular.

“I’ve beenvery successful, and I’m grateful,” said one Moscow banker, who asked to beidentified only by his first name, Vladimir, given the controversy around Mr.Navalny. “Now I’d like to make this country a better place.” The banker said hediscreetly volunteered to help Mr. Navalny analyze financial documents.

TheTransneft controversy has only heightened interest in Mr. Navalny’s blog. Hehas since branched out from shareholder activism, creating RosPil.info, a new Web site aboutcorruption in the government procurement process. It posts documents aboutstate tenders and asks for public input on matters like the fairness of theprices or the deadlines.

It is apioneering experiment in crowd-sourcing what had traditionally beeninvestigative journalism, in a country where that type of journalism isrepressed. The site is financed with online donations, using a Russian analogueto PayPal.

“I’m notjust saying, 'Here are the corrupt bureaucrats,’ ” Mr. Navalny said. “Ioffer solutions.”

LikeNavalny.ru, RosPil.info makes for dense reading, but its popularity suggests agroundswell of of public anger.

“The middleclass hates corruption,” Mr. Navalny said. “If you tell a grandmother in avillage the state oil company stole $1 billion, she won’t understand. Butsomebody who owns stock in that company certainly will.”

The new site’sname means Russian Saw. It features an image of the fierce-looking two headedRussian eagle — the state symbol — absurdly grasping two carpenter saws in itstalons.

Why saws?Russian slang for taking a kickback is to “saw off” a piece of the contract.Mr. Navalny has helped make the saw a symbol of this discontent — a twist onthe peasant mob’s pitchfork, for a contemporary Russian audience.

The siteexplains why Russians should volunteer their time to read the tender documents:“Because pensioners, doctors and teachers are on the edge of survival, whilescoundrels in power buy another villa, yacht or the devil knows what.”