Would A Surviving Soviet Union Have A Internet Or Intranet?

[GuildedAgeNostalgia]

1. Internet - Global, all connected online system that almost the whole world uses in otl. Extremely efficient, lot's of perks, but hard to regulate and control.

2. Intranet - A online system completely closed off and separated from the global Internet. North Korea uses this as well as a couple other countries. Inefficient compared to the Internet, but easier to regulate and secure.

3. Although the Soviet Union did survive into the beginning of the computer age, it did not live long enough to truly experience the Internet or provide a online system for the people of the Soviet Union.

My question is, had the Soviet Union survived into the 20th century, would they have the Internet for their people, or would they have been like North Korea and have a intranet? If it had gone the route of developing a intranet, would it have been successful or extremely limited and undeveloped like North Korea's intranet system? Or would the Soviet Union be like China today and just have the Internet but create a giant firewall that regulates the flow of information?

 

[Lalli]

It totally depends what kind of state surviving Soviet Union is. It could be whatever from almost free Internet to Intranet or even outright ban of Internet.

 

[danielb1]

The Soviet Union technically already was on the Internet before the end, with the first connection in 1990:
DEMOS

 

[Cudymcar]

1. Internet - Global, all connected online system that almost the whole world uses in otl. Extremely efficient, lot's of perks, but hard to regulate and control.

2. Intranet - A online system completely closed off and separated from the global Internet. North Korea uses this as well as a couple other countries. Inefficient compared to the Internet, but easier to regulate and secure.

3rd option - national firewall, like in China.

 

[Seandineen]

I think after destalinization, the use of the Internet, will be a privilege for the Nomenklatura, to be given at the discretion of party brass.

 

[Hrvatskiwi]

I think after destalinization, the use of the Internet, will be a privilege for the Nomenklatura, to be given at the discretion of party brass.

Why do you think that? That didnt happen in any other Communist country, including China. There are a lot of benefits to allowing citizens access to global communications, even if there are obvious downsides for authoritarian regimes.

 

[Seandineen]

Totalitarianism only needs to control a few things: The media, and the ability to dispense privilege to some and withhold from others. Absent mass terror, rewarding with access to media is an effective incentive. North Korea gives tv's to athletes and artists.

 

[Reflection]

I imagine in a surviving USSR would have an internet system comparable to China, safeguarded from the West by a massive firewall. Likely called the "Iron Firewall" in such a timeline, creating an internet ecosystem that's exclusive to the USSR and their core Eastern Bloc allies. This would be protect its citizen from "dangerous" ideas and keep outsiders from looking in. In geopolitical terms, I think this would be widely regarded as the second Iron Curtain, a digital barrier that exists alongside the physical barrier, both serving to separate the two rival Blocs.

 

[Hrvatskiwi]

I imagine in a surviving USSR would have an internet system comparable to China, safeguarded from the West by a massive firewall. Likely called the "Iron Firewall" in such a timeline, creating an internet ecosystem that's exclusive to the USSR and their core Eastern Bloc allies. This would be protect its citizen from "dangerous" ideas and keep outsiders from looking in. In geopolitical terms, I think this would be widely regarded as the second Iron Curtain, a digital barrier that exists alongside the physical barrier, both serving to separate the two rival Blocs.

I imagine that there would probably be firewalls in place, although I could also see the USSR engaging in a lot of internet-based espionage and agitprop activities 20 years ahead of that becoming a really common thing in our timeline.

 

[Seandineen]

I imagine in a surviving USSR would have an internet system comparable to China, safeguarded from the West by a massive firewall. Likely called the "Iron Firewall" in such a timeline, creating an internet ecosystem that's exclusive to the USSR and their core Eastern Bloc allies. This would be protect its citizen from "dangerous" ideas and keep outsiders from looking in. In geopolitical terms, I think this would be widely regarded as the second Iron Curtain, a digital barrier that exists alongside the physical barrier, both serving to separate the two rival Blocs.

I know that Chief Designer Sergi Korolev, the head of the Soviet space program, had a prophetic interest in computers, the power to store information. If he lived, he could have designed a manageable internet.

 

[Hrvatskiwi]

I know that Chief Designer Sergi Korolev, the head of the Soviet space program, had a prophetic interest in computers, the power to store information. If he lived, he could have designed a manageable internet.

Korolev wasn't going to live much longer than he did already. He had suffered such horrible health complications as a result of his internment in the gulag during the Stalin years that at his death he had issues with his heart, intestines, gall bladder and kidneys. There were also others far more involved in the development of computers in the USSR, such as Aksel Berg and Viktor Glushkov. So you don't need Korolev living to get a SovNet.

 

[Seandineen]

Granted. but I have a soft spot for the old comrade.

 

[Whiteshore]

I think after destalinization, the use of the Internet, will be a privilege for the Nomenklatura, to be given at the discretion of party brass.

Why do you think that? That didnt happen in any other Communist country, including China. There are a lot of benefits to allowing citizens access to global communications, even if there are obvious downsides for authoritarian regimes.

That's what North Korea did IOTL, TBF.

 

[Hrvatskiwi]

That's what North Korea did IOTL, TBF.

True true, but the DPRK is such an aberration in terms of how closed off it is. Post-Stalin its pretty much impossible for the USSR to be as closed-off as the DPRK is.

 

[GuildedAgeNostalgia]

Up until recently, Cuba had a intranet system for it's country, although the public is starting to get access to the internet

 

[Cudymcar]

Totalitarianism only needs to control a few things

USSR was not totalitarian after Stalin. International digital connections were used since 1970s.

 

[ECavalier]

USSR was not totalitarian after Stalin. International digital connections were used since 1970s.

Depends on whether you define totalitarianism as just a system that prohibits opposition and dominates public life (the USSR for all of it’s existence) or one that also requires one individual to have principle control of that kind of power (witch arguably still applies to Khrushchev).

 

[Cudymcar]

Depends on whether you define totalitarianism

Well, Hannah Arendt definitely identifies the totalitarian period strictly with Stalin's rule, and she's sort of an authority on the subject.

 

[Seandineen]

I wouldn't quarrel with her.

 

[Interdimensional Nomad]

The .su domain (su for Soviet Union) does exist in OTL (and there also used to be .dd for East Germany and .yu for Yugoslavia). As the 1980s wore on it did seem like the Soviet Union was increasingly, if cautiously, opening up to the wider global economy, and internet adoption would inevitably happen, even if on a more limited basis in the earlier years, due to having to work with the systems and norms of their Western trading partners.

While I think the Soviet Union would begin by trying to develop its own intranets and limit their interaction with the wider internet, I feel like such a system of closed computer networks would eventually experience a long period of stagnation and decline, dying a death similar to Minitel. Given a Soviet population increasingly exposed to Western consumer products (and Western businesses were increasingly breaking into the market by the late 80s), the demand for personal computers and the services they connect to would be there. In a sense I think they would have to go the way of China soon; being integrated into the wider global internet and having a serious presence within it, but with it being heavily censored domestically by firewalls, and with quite a few popular Western websites being entirely banned and having domestically-grown replacements for Soviet and Eastern Bloc citizens to use.