[ih] History of the Internet in Russia

[the keyboard of geoff goodfellow]

EXCERPTing from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet_in_Russia:

"*Background*

In the USSR <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR>, the first computer
networks appeared in the 1950s in missile defense
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_defense> system at Sary Shagan
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sary_Shagan> (first they were tested in
Moscow at Lebedev Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebedev_Institute_of_Precision_Mechanics_and_Computer_Engineering>).
In the 1960s, the massive computer network project called OGAS
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS> was proposed but failed to be
implemented.[3]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet_in_Russia#cite_note-3>
 Apollo–Soyuz <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo%E2%80%93Soyuz> USA–USSR
joint space program (1972–1975) used digital data for spaceships
transmitted between two countries.[4]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet_in_Russia#cite_note-4>

Since the late 1970s, X.25 Soviet
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet> networks
began to appear and Akademset <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademset> emerged
in Leningrad <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad> in 1978. By 1982
VNIIPAS <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VNIIPAS>[5]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet_in_Russia#cite_note-5>
institute
was created in Moscow <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow> to serve as
Akademset's central node, which established X.25 regular connection to IIASA
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IIASA> in Austria (which allowed access to
other worldwide networks). In 1983, VNIIPAS together with USA government
and George Soros <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros> created
Soviet X.25 service provider called SFMT ("San Francisco — Moscow
Teleport") that later became Sovam Teleport
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet_in_Russia#Sovam_Teleport>
("Soviet-American
Teleport"). VNIIPAS also provided X.25 services, including over satellite,
to Eastern bloc <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_bloc> countries
together with Mongolia, Cuba and Vietnam. At the time, Western users of
Usenet <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet> were generally unaware of
that, and considered such networking in USSR unexistent, so one of them on
April 1, 1984 made an "April fool
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day>" hoax about "Kremvax
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremvax>" ("Kremlin
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlin> VAX
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX>") that gained some popularity for
subsequent years. USSR nominally joined private Fidonet
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet> network in October 1990 when first
node of *Region 50* appeared in Novosibirsk
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novosibirsk>.

Some of the early Soviet/Russian networks were also initiated as parts of
BITNET <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET>.
Foundation of the Russian Internet
See also: Internet in Russia § History
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Russia#History>
Sovam Teleport
Main articles: Akademset <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademset> and
VNIIPAS <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VNIIPAS>

Sovam Teleport is a Russian telecommunications company that was founded in
1990. The company was established as a joint venture of the San Francisco
Moscow Teleport network and the All-Russian Research Institute of Automated
Application Systems (ВНИИПАС) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VNIIPAS>.[6]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet_in_Russia#cite_note-6>
The
name stands for "Short sOViet-AMerican Teleport".

San Francisco Moscow Teleport (SFMT) was launched in 1983 by financier
George Soros and American Joel Schatz[7]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet_in_Russia#cite_note-7>
with
the support of the US government. It was a non-profit project with a goal
to expand the Internet to the USSR. In 1986, the project changed its status
and became a commercial enterprise. The All-Russian Research Institute of
Automated Application Systems provided a data transmission network with
some countries in Eastern Europe, as well as Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam,
almost all of the data traffic was scientific and technical information,
and in 1983 organized a non-state email network. By the beginning of the
1990s, almost half of the VNII traffic amounted to operational data from
electronic mail systems.[8]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet_in_Russia#cite_note-:0-8>

The company's first network was built on the X.25 protocol
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.25> in 1990. In 1992, Sovam Teleport began
to build a UUCP <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP> mail and terminal
access system through American servers. Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola,
DuPont, Estee Lauder, Time magazine, and France Presse were among the first
corporate clients of the company. Since 1992, the British company Cable &
Wireless, which has its own fiber-optic channels in Europe, has become the
third co-founder of the company. On June 4, 1992, the company was
re-registered as a limited liability partnership, and all three co-founders
- Cable & Wireless, All-Russian Research Institute of Automated Application
Systems and SFMT - received almost equal shares. On July 28, 1993, a
communications center in Tashkent began servicing customers. The provider
domain sovam.com, which opened on February 24, 1994, became the first
public Internet site in Russia.[8]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet_in_Russia#cite_note-:0-8>

Sovam Teleport in early 1990s became a first SWIFT
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWIFT> network provider for emerging Russian
banks (over x.25)."

[...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet_in_Russia



-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True