It's not as bad as you'd think. SEELangs is the Slavic and East European Languages e-list that's been around since forever and includes a wide variety of professors, professionals, librarians, grad students, and such. More than a few Russians (and other Slavs) in Slavic countries and Europe.
The Russian government set up WiFi hotspots at places like parks and post offices, schools. If you want to use those, you need to give your passport #. This only applies to those, not to companies that set up WiFi hotspots. "Public" = "government provided" as opposed to "available to the public." These are far more likely to be in rural and underserved areas.
The other "bad thing" is that all ISPs will have to start keeping all their user info "local", in-country, so that the government "oversight" agency can access them. In other words, no, you don't have to give your passport info if you're using a private-public hotspot. But the info is there, all the same.
Note that "passport" is the standard internal passport that you get when you're 14 or 16, whatever the age is. You're supposed to have that on you at all times in public, it's where you get your residence stamps if you're in certain towns or provinces (you have to register your address with the local police), where you get your employer stamps. The closest we have to it is drivers license or state-issued ID, but there's no need for anybody to report changes of address to the local police and get a stamp saying you're allowed to live there. (This is what some consider to be a free country, unlike the US where, it seems, a reasonable number of people don't even have IDs.)
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