https://cepa.org/article/russia-jails-the-father-of-russias-internet/
"Alexey Soldatov, a Russian Internet pioneer and a founder of the first
Internet provider in the country, has been sentenced by a court to two years in
a labor colony on charges of “abuse of power.” Soldatov, 72, had been detained
by a court in Moscow. He is terminally ill.
Very few in Russia believe in the government charges against a man widely known
as a Father of the Russian Internet — and who is less well known as the father
of Andrei Soldatov, one of this article’s authors.
Soldatov was accused of abuse of power when managing a pool of IP-addresses by
an organization he had no position at. This legal absurdity was enough to see
him imprisoned even though the court knew of Soldatov’s illness, which meant
the court had no legal right to pass a custodial sentence. His family believes
that the decision is essentially a death sentence.
Soldatov, a nuclear physicist by training, made his career in the Kurchatov
Institute of Atomic Energy, a leading Soviet nuclear research facility during
the Cold War. In addition to research on atomic weapons, scientists at the
Kurchatov were involved in many crucial defense projects, ranging from Soviet
nuclear submarines to laser weapons. As a result, the institute held an exalted
status in the Soviet Union.
Because of that, the institute enjoyed a degree of freedom unthinkable for
other Soviet research centers. Among other things, it meant the institute had a
phone line capable of making international calls, something unthinkable at
almost any other institution.
Soldatov, who was known at the Kurchatov Institute for using computers more
than anyone else to do his work, dreamt of building a network at the institute.
He formed a team of programmers around him, and in 1990 they began to think
about how they could connect the institute with other research centers in the
country. They needed a name for this network, they ran a random word-selection
program in English. The program came up with Relcom.
In August of that year, the Relcom network became a reality, making a
connection between the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow and the Institute of
Informatics and Automation in Leningrad, 460 miles away. Next, a connection was
established with research centers in Dubna, Serpukhov, and Novosibirsk. The
network used ordinary telephone lines, and the bandwidth was extremely narrow —
the network was capable only of exchanging simple e-mails. But the Relcom team
was dreaming of connecting with the world.
On August 28, 1990, the very first Soviet connection to the global Internet was
made when Kurchatov programmers exchanged emails with a university in Helsinki,
Finland. The isolated Soviet Union, thanks to Relcom, was now connected to the
global Internet. Relcom rapidly expanded, and many began using the word Relcom
as a shorthand term the Internet or email.
It was a very anti-Soviet idea — to connect people instantly both within the
country and the world. The Soviet Union was a country where hierarchy was
everything, and where any act required obligatory pre-authorization."
Via Dave Farber.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
