[ih] How the Soviet Union Sent Its First Man to the Internet

[Johan Helsingius]

Hi, Ian,

> I am not sure - but it connected via Nordnet in Sweden (at that stage it
> might have been PNS Sweden)

Nordnet or nordUnet? If the latter, wouldn't they have connected
through the Finnish part of Nordunet (FUNET) rather than SUNET?

> James Walch in his early book "In the Net" writes about this in detail and 
> was personally involved- but apparently the 1990 END (European Nuclear 
> Disarmament Conference) was held for the first time in the Soviet bloc, 
> (jointly in Tallinn Estonia and Helsinki Finland).

I hope you aren't implying Finland was part of the Soviet bloc? :)

> Infrastructure was set up
> for this from 1989 with modernisation of the Tallinn exchange. This made it 
> easier to connect USSR and the west apparently, without needing a manual 
> connection via an exchange operator. So all of USSR could connect to Tallinn 
> apparently, and the new infrastructure there allowed setting up a link to 
> the rest of the world without anyone knowing an overseas connection had been 
> made. Others might know more.

Funny enough, in the 90's I came across an Estonian company that wanted
a high-capacity Internet connection (and a large address space) to a point
in the middle of nowhere on the Finnish south coast - to a peninsula that
had briefly housed a Soviet naval base in the immediate post-war years,
and that is pretty much straight across from Tallinn, 30 km away on the
other side of the Gulf of Finland. They refused to tell what they needed
the connectivity for... :)

	Julf