🚀 go-pugleaf

On September 10, 1990, I saw a posting on the USENET newsgroup known
as alt.folklore.computers purporting to be from one Vadim G. Antonov
from an organization known as DEMOS in Moscow.  On Sept. 16, I sent
out an inquiry over USENET directed to 39 newsgroups, chosen as those
I thought might be interesting to a new site in the Soviet Union.
Here is what I learned from the replies I got to this inquiry:

First, the USSR is receiving the USENET news feed.  Welcome!
Initially, because of limited bandwidth, USENET news reaches only
three network nodes in Moscow, and they only get a small fraction of
the newsgroups.  Here are the newsgroups they are known to receive:

	alt.folklore.computers
	comp.unix.sysv386
	comp.mail.uucp
	comp.dcom.modems
	comp.unix.questions
	comp.protocols.iso
	comp.mail.sendmail
	comp.unix.xenix
	xomp.unix.xenix.sco
	eunet.test
	eunet.jokes

Electronic mail to the Soviet Union can reach a far larger number of
sites; these sites are connected to the growing RELNET network, and
as communications problems are solved, it appears to be a safe
assumption that USENET will spread through much of RELNET.

RELCOM currently connects about 50 host computers, but it is growing
quickly.  By the end of this year, they expect on the order of 200
hosts on the network.  Hosts are currently located in the following
organizations:

        demos.su        - DEMOS (network R&D center & software mfr)
        kiae.su         - Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy
                          (the major backbone host on the network)
        icsti.su        - International Center of Scientific &
                          Technology Information
        velham.su       - project VELHAM (psychology & education)
        jvd.su          - Joint Venture Dialogue (Moscow)
        ipmce.su        - Institute of Precise Mechanics & Computers
                          Engineering
        hantarex.su     - Joint Venture Hantarex
        isi.itfs.nsk.su - Institute of Systems Researches (Novosibirsk)
        kaija.spb.su    - Center KAIJA (Leningrad)
        iias.spb.su     - Institute of Informatique (Leningrad)
        ioc.ew.su       - Institute of Cybernetics (Estonia, Tallinn)

Organizationally, RELCOM is a network connecting commercial and
academic research and development institutions, apparently using UUCP
protocols, with no military connections at this time.  The network is
intended to be a self-supporting non-profit operation; central network
support services are provided by the DEMOS Software Cooperative (named
after the moon of Mars, not short for Demonstration, as many US
readers appear to have inferred).

USENET news and electronic mail between the various networks in the
United States and the RELCOM network in the Soviet Union is handled by
fuug.fi, Finland, the mail relay host of the Finnish UNIX User's Group.
The usual path to this machine is through mcsun.eu.net, also known as
relay.eu.net; this machine is located in Amsterdam and serves as the
gateway for much of the electronic mail between the United States and
Europe.

The people at DEMOS software say that they are in the process of
registering .su (Soviet Union) as an official top-level Internet domain
with the Stanford Research Institute Network Information Center.  Until
they do so, electronic mail to sites in the .su domain must be
explicitly forwarded through relay.eu.net.

People at DEMOS Software are in contact with people at the Open Systems
Foundation and at Bell Labs.  The Soviet UNIX User's Group will host
the First Soviet UNIX User's Conference in Moscow, Oct 29 to Nov 2.

			--------------------

How do we know that the entire thing isn't an elaborate hoax?  There
was an elaborate (and funny) April fool's hoax perpetrated in 1984 by
Piet Beertrema in Amsterdam involving USENET postings from a fictional
person named K. Chernenko on a machine named kremvax and involving
machines named moskvax and kgbvax.

It would be quite remarkable if the contacts with DEMOS software were
forgeries.  People at Bell Labs have arranged trips to Moscow to
attend the Soviet UNIX User's Group meeting using electronic mail to
people at DEMOS; the contacts between the Open Systems Foundation and
DEMOS have been conducted this way, and many other people have
reported contacts with users at DEMOS and at the Joint Venture Dialog.

All of the network trace information added to the USENET postings and
electronic mail from the machines in the Soviet Union consistently
indicate the use of the same gateway machine in Finland, and if they
were forgeries, the only site where it would be easy to originate
them would be in Finland.  Mail to users in Finland, the Netherlands,
Austria, Australia, and the United States all seems to pass through
the same path into the Soviet Union.

					Doug Jones
					jo...@herky.cs.uiowa.edu