How a handful of geeks defied the USSR (2011)

Relevant—here are IRC logs from the 1991 Soviet coup d&#x27;état attempt: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20090628013626&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ibiblio.org&#x2F;pub&#x2F;academic&#x2F;communications&#x2F;logs&#x2F;report-ussr-gorbatchev" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20090628013626&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ibiblio...</a>

<i>&quot;Thus the first cyber-activists were able to use this decentralized architecture and Usenet (developed in the USSR in 1982) to circumvent traditional censorship.&quot;</i><p>That should read, <i>&quot;re-inveneted in USSR&quot;</i>.<p>Tom Truscott [0] and Jim Ellis [1] are the creators of Usenet. Bnews was indeed released in &#x27;82, using UUCP to exchange between machines. [2] This was before NNTP. In &#x27;95, Truscott and Ellis received the Flame award at USENIX.[3] Guess what for?<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tom_Truscott" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tom_Truscott</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Jim_Ellis_%28computing%29" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Jim_Ellis_%28computing%29</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tldp.org&#x2F;LDP&#x2F;nag&#x2F;node256.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tldp.org&#x2F;LDP&#x2F;nag&#x2F;node256.html</a><p>[3] 1995: <i>&quot;the third Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Tom Truscott, Steve Bellovin, and Jim Ellis for their work in creating USENET.&quot;</i> ~ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usenix.org&#x2F;about&#x2F;flame" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usenix.org&#x2F;about&#x2F;flame</a>

Relcom and USENET indeed played a role in helping the people of Moscow and Leningrad to defeat that coup d&#x27;état: the mere fact, that it continued to operate was an indication of a weakened grip of the KGB.

&quot;All channels were blacked-out except for one; Usenet, which is the grandfather of chat-rooms and is capable or [sic] surviving without the Internet.&quot;<p>Do they mean Usenet doesn&#x27;t require IP to work? And did that matter here? Would actually be fascinating if some alternative federated server comms played a pivotal role, but more likely this is careless writing.

There&#x27;s a good account of the coup attempt in <i>The Dead Hand</i>[0] in the last 1&#x2F;3 of the book. According to it, Gorbachev and family were isolated in his dacha, and his &quot;Nuclear Football&quot; -- the <i>Cheget</i>, that controlled their ICBM launch codes was taken from him.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous-Legacy-ebook&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B002PXFYPQ" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous-Legacy-eboo...</a>

I guess pretty much anybody had defied the USSR at that point.<p>The coup attempt was an act of desperation.

Usenet probably did play some small part in taking power away from the government and Gosplan, and handing it to the people of the USSR.<p>This is one of the main reasons the US government and the corporations which monopolize the last mile of communications effectively killed off Usenet in 2009.