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| Kremvax, the link between Relcom and the West |
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| Polina Antonova |
Perhaps the first example of network citizen journalism was during the August 1991
coup attempt by eight high level Soviet officials. There were two days of confrontation between demonstrators and troops, during which all Russian media except Usenet news groups were shut down by the authorities. Usenet, a precursor of today's Internet discussion forums, carried traffic into, out of and within Russia (70 cities) during the days of the coup attempt.
One of the quotes from that time foreshadows the Internet shut down in Egypt today. Polina Antonova of RELCOM, the Unix distributor that operated the network wrote:
They try to close all mass media, they stopped CNN an hour ago, and Soviet TV transmits opera and old movies. But, thank Heaven, they don't consider RELCOM mass media or they simply forgot about it. Now we transmit information enough to put us in prison for the rest of our life.
After two tense days, the coup failed and president Mikhail Gorbachev was restored to power. For more on the role of the network during the coup attempt, see:
My name is Larry Press. I am an information systems professor and have been learning and teaching about information technology since the days of unit record equipment.
Do you know what happened to her of RELcom? It would make a good movie.
ReplyDeletePolina is doing fine, after years of being a productive Web developer in San Francisco she decided to downshift and pursue her real passion - cooking:
ReplyDeletehttp://caliblini.com/
Relcom is still around, though over the years the core engineering team drifted apart (quite a few people, including Polina, ended up in US) - and it lost its dominant position in the market, being surpasses by younger and well-capitalized network providers.
http://www.relcom.ru/
I never understood usenet was such an important and useful information gathering tool during 1991. Looks like we came a long way since then. It's good to see services like Giganews Reviews is still around. Now we can send tweets from our phones, chat in real time over 3g networks, and virtually have a mobile computer in our pockets. Very exciting times.
ReplyDelete