Soviet Internet and other thoughts.

I'd think the soviets would make quite a point of a 'computer for every home'. What a way to show off their socialist credentials.

Could be quite interesting really, two parallel internets, the www. and BBB. (or whatever it is the soviets would call it)
The communist world alphabet would obviously be the smaller and less developed of the two but still...intruiging.
 
About video games: might internet piracy be extremely popular in the SU?
Also, about the War on Terror: perhaps Islamic Terrorists consider Communism to be worse than the Western corruption? After all, IIRC, they suppress millions of Muslims in Chechnya, Azerbaijan, and the 'Stans, not to mention the Invasion of Afghanistan.

The proper term is USSR, not SU (or if you really want to be a purist, then you can call it CCCP). Does the Chinese government actually encourage such software piracy, or just tolerate it.

If something like 9/11 happened in the Soviet Union, heavy handed might be an understatement in describing their response. What was it in that Clancy book (I think it's Sum of All Fears) did the Russians do in response?
 

WarBastard

Banned
The proper term is USSR, not SU (or if you really want to be a purist, then you can call it CCCP). Does the Chinese government actually encourage such software piracy, or just tolerate it.

If something like 9/11 happened in the Soviet Union, heavy handed might be an understatement in describing their response. What was it in that Clancy book (I think it's Sum of All Fears) did the Russians do in response?

In Tom Clancy books the Chinese, Soviets and Arabs all have hoofen feet, so I wouldn't use that as a guideline
 
In Tom Clancy books the Chinese, Soviets and Arabs all have hoofen feet, so I wouldn't use that as a guideline

Yeah, whatever. Was it Sum of All Fears?

You don't think the Soviets wouldn't just plough into Chechnya and deport half its population, and bomb the other half, if they really got pissed off?
 
About video games: might internet piracy be extremely popular in the SU?

More than popular. It would be the default distribution mode for software.
Remember there were no IP copyright protections. Intellectual property is theft, comrade. :)

One thing though: The possibility for dissidents to communicate using software tapes and floppies passed by hand among collections of games or hacked into their code. With digital one to one copy, how can you tell who is the originator?

That would be one very good reason for the government to create a viable information network: both to provide entertainment and educational material but more importantly to provide for adequate communication monitoring to prevent the free unsupervised exchange of ideas, which is likely to happen one way or another once digital samszdat is a possibility.
 
I think most of you have too grim vision of how life in eastern bloc countries looked like. By 80's the communist ideology was pretty much dead and celebrated only during official holidays. It's not like average people on the streets of Moscow would start their conversation like:
"Greetings, comrade, how is our Great Proletarian Revolution going?"
"United frot of workers made great progress comrade, soon imperialist pigs will be crushed!".

People in eastern bloc states had access (althought sometimes unofficial) to western films and books, so why not internet and games. Ideas of communist party making propaganda games about WW2 is nonsense. It is more possible that most programs used and games played would be of western origin, but mostly illegal copies. Some small private or state sponsored software companies might also exist.

The best comparison is probably China. They have internet after all, although a bit censored,a nd I never heard about their communist party promoting their agenda throuth computer games, though I think they had banned some titles. And rememeber that Soviet Union was more liberal of the two, when it still existed.
 
I think most of you have too grim vision of how life in eastern bloc countries looked like. By 80's the communist ideology was pretty much dead and celebrated only during official holidays. It's not like average people on the streets of Moscow would start their conversation like:
"Greetings, comrade, how is our Great Proletarian Revolution going?"
"United frot of workers made great progress comrade, soon imperialist pigs will be crushed!".

People in eastern bloc states had access (althought sometimes unofficial) to western films and books, so why not internet and games. Ideas of communist party making propaganda games about WW2 is nonsense. It is more possible that most programs used and games played would be of western origin, but mostly illegal copies. Some small private or state sponsored software companies might also exist.

The best comparison is probably China. They have internet after all, although a bit censored,a nd I never heard about their communist party promoting their agenda throuth computer games, though I think they had banned some titles. And rememeber that Soviet Union was more liberal of the two, when it still existed.

Well... I was an avid listener of the Radio Moscow Spanish language service "Panorama... all about Soviet life!" back in the day.

http://www.tensionsofeurope.eu/ccount/click.php?id=33

This is a quite interesting account of popular computing in Poland. From the other side of Europe, my own experience of growing up with 8 bit computers is not too dissimilar. (Even the outrage at titles such as Raid Over Moscow is somewhat familiar... imagine the reception Ole Toro, a bullfighting simulator had in the UK...)
 
I was listening to this audiobook today (Revolution 1989), and started thinking about what the internet would look like in the Soviet Union. I'm not caring about how it survived, but what if it did survive until today? How would modern technology impact the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact?

Would they have their own internet, or be part of the WWW?

Would they have the People's News Network and RedstarSoft?

What about cellphone technology? Would they be allowed, and just how monitored would they be?

Would new computers be used to sort through these phone calls, as well as E-mails, for less-than-pure thoughts?

Would miniturization of electronics result in bugs in everything? Maybe even you own silverware being bugged?

Would certain people be tagged with RFID?

How would the Warsaw Pact react to the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the violence there? (no butterfly nonsense either, just take the question at face value please)

Would terrorism be largely the problem of the Second World? And would the CIA be supplying groups like Al Qaeda in fighting them?

Or if there was a war on terror, how would the Soviets react to the Iraq War (I have the feeling they'd be laughing themselves silly when they heard the US was going into Afganistan: "Ok Comrades, have fun.")?

What about KGB UCAVs?

Well, there is still a valid .su domain for the Soviet Union which is still used for a very few websites, though .ru for Russia is the one used for all sites created in modern times. There must have been some Internet activity for there to be a .su domain.

It is possible that the USSR would have a Minitel-type system for personal use and keep the "real" internet for scientific/military use only like Arpanet was in the USA.

People's News Network and RedStar Soft? Probably.

Cell phones had already been introduced before the fall of the Soviet Union, though only Communist Party members were allowed to have one.

Computer surveillance of e-mail and phone? Maybe targeted at certain people, but not generally. Too much manpower. Just like the telescreen society of 1984 isn't feasible. Same with bugs everywhere.

Yugo wasn't a WP member, maybe the Soviets would just let it go and use the violence as an example of why Soviet Communism is the only right kind.

Terrorism in 2nd World unlikely. They never pissed off the kind of people who would do such a thing.

Soviets were US allies in 1st Iraq war OTL. Probably would be in 2nd as well.

For a look at Internet under Communism, consider Chinese and Cuban approaches. North Korea has exactly one Internet-connected computer, guess where it is? But of course the USSR was no North Korea....
 
The best comparison is probably China. They have internet after all, although a bit censored,a nd I never heard about their communist party promoting their agenda throuth computer games, though I think they had banned some titles. And rememeber that Soviet Union was more liberal of the two, when it still existed.

While I think there's not that much of a demand for homegrown Chinese videogames as far as I know (as much of the population isn't as well-off as say, the Japanese) I think there could be at least a small one in the Union, if only to prevent the market from being satured with western products.

Also, ironically enough, many American WW2 games could be considered propaganda (Medal of Honor, anyone?), so why couldn't a USSR do it? ;)
 
Also, ironically enough, many American WW2 games could be considered propaganda (Medal of Honor, anyone?), so why couldn't a USSR do it? ;)

Well, for the same reason they were bad at other popular, easily accessible propaganda. If they did one, it wouldn't be as good and nobody would play it. Though you can kind of see some measure of Russian-centric pushback in the games Snowball develops today, so given time...a lot of time...maybe the Soviets would get good at it too.
 
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