Internet In The Post Soviet Area

This book offers a comparative perspective on the technological, economic, and political aspects of Internet development in the post-Soviet countries. In doing so, international experts analyze similarities and differences in various countries throughout the chapters. The volume consists of two parts. The chapters of the first part examine the post-Soviet area as a whole. The second part includes specific case studies on the development of the Internet, either in individual countries or in groups of countries. Countries analyzed are Estonia, Ukraine, Russia as well as three Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Topics covered in the volume include, but are not limited to measurement, dynamics, and structure of each national Internet audience; the history of the Internet in the post-Soviet countries; development of infrastructure; Internet regulation and institutional aspects; online markets such as telecommunications, online advertising, e-commerce, and digital content; social and cultural aspects; as well as the transformation of the national media systems. This book is a must-read for students, researchers, and scholars of political science and economics, as well as policymakers and practitioners interested in a better understanding of Internet development in the post-Soviet area. .

This book presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the Internet in Russia and its impact on various aspects of social life. The contributions discuss topics such as the features of the Russian media system and digitization processes, the history of the Runet, national Internet markets and the Internet economy, as well as legal aspects. By presenting the results of relevant case studies, it illustrates the process of integrating the Russian segment of the Internet into the international system, offering insights into various country-specific features of the Runet’s functioning and development. The first part of the book focuses on the Internet in the context of development of the Russian media system with respect to historical features and digital inequalities. The second part then discusses economic and legal aspects of the Runet, while the third and the fourth parts offer an analysis of digital culture, including the role of journalism and regional diversities as well as online representations and discussions. The chapter "Runet in Crisis Situations" is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

This book offers a comparative perspective on the technological, economic, and political aspects of Internet development in the post-Soviet countries. In doing so, international experts analyze similarities and differences in various countries throughout the chapters. The volume consists of two parts. The chapters of the first part examine the post-Soviet area as a whole. The second part includes specific case studies on the development of the Internet, either in individual countries or in groups of countries. Countries analyzed are Estonia, Ukraine, Russia as well as three Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Topics covered in the volume include, but are not limited to measurement, dynamics, and structure of each national Internet audience; the history of the Internet in the post-Soviet countries; development of infrastructure; Internet regulation and institutional aspects; online markets such as telecommunications, online advertising, e-commerce, and digital content; social and cultural aspects; as well as the transformation of the national media systems. This book is a must-read for students, researchers, and scholars of political science and economics, as well as policymakers and practitioners interested in a better understanding of Internet development in the post-Soviet area.

This study of the Russian internet explores how, when, and why the internet challenges leaders in non-free states. Using an analysis of content, community, catalysts, control, and co-optation, Revolution Stalled moves beyond 'virtual' politics to show how the internet can threaten and defy information hegemony and re-shape societies.

Post-Soviet Handbook: A Guide to Grassroots Organizations and Internet Resources

This book describes the rise of independent mass media in Russia, from the loosening of censorship under Gorbachev's policy of glasnost to the proliferation of independent newspapers and the rise of media barons during the Yeltsin years. The role of the Internet, the impact of the 1998 financial crisis, the succession of Putin, and the effort to reimpose central power over privately controlled media empires mark the end of the first decade of a Russian free press. Throughout the book, there is a focus on the close intermingling of political power and media power, as the propaganda function of the press in fact never disappeared, but rather has been harnessed to multiple and conflicting ideological interests. More than a guide to the volatile Russian media scene and its players, Media and Power in Post-Soviet Russia poses questions of importance and relevance in any functioning democracy.

How, despite thirty years of effort, Soviet attempts to build a national computer network were undone by socialists who seemed to behave like capitalists. Between 1959 and 1989, Soviet scientists and officials made numerous attempts to network their nation—to construct a nationwide computer network. None of these attempts succeeded, and the enterprise had been abandoned by the time the Soviet Union fell apart. Meanwhile, ARPANET, the American precursor to the Internet, went online in 1969. Why did the Soviet network, with top-level scientists and patriotic incentives, fail while the American network succeeded? In How Not to Network a Nation, Benjamin Peters reverses the usual cold war dualities and argues that the American ARPANET took shape thanks to well-managed state subsidies and collaborative research environments and the Soviet network projects stumbled because of unregulated competition among self-interested institutions, bureaucrats, and others. The capitalists behaved like socialists while the socialists behaved like capitalists. After examining the midcentury rise of cybernetics, the science of self-governing systems, and the emergence in the Soviet Union of economic cybernetics, Peters complicates this uneasy role reversal while chronicling the various Soviet attempts to build a “unified information network.” Drawing on previously unknown archival and historical materials, he focuses on the final, and most ambitious of these projects, the All-State Automated System of Management (OGAS), and its principal promoter, Viktor M. Glushkov. Peters describes the rise and fall of OGAS—its theoretical and practical reach, its vision of a national economy managed by network, the bureaucratic obstacles it encountered, and the institutional stalemate that killed it. Finally, he considers the implications of the Soviet experience for today's networked world.

This book evaluates the evolution of social innovation in post-Soviet Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Caucasus. Following the dissolution of the USSR, organisations such as the UNDP have encouraged local communities and governments to innovate in order to find solutions to existing social problems. This book demonstrates that progress with social innovations has varied, with countries with low government support such as Uzbekistan struggling, whereas countries with better government support and a more active civil society, such as Armenia and Ukraine, have seen more positive results. Covering the period 2012-2020 and a broad range of countries, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Moldova, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, this book provides an impressively broad-ranging critical analysis of post-Soviet social innovation. Including social innovations emerging as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak, this will be an important comparative study for researchers and practitioners working on social innovation, and to those with an interest in post-Soviet development.