Soviet Union lives on in cyberspace

Last Modified: 20 Apr 2008
Source: PA News

The Soviet Union may be in the dustbin of history, but there's one place the socialist utopia lives on - cyberspace.

Sixteen years after the superpower's collapse, websites ending in the Soviet .su domain name have been rising - registrations increased 45% this year alone.

Bloggers, entrepreneurs and die-hard communists are all part of a small but growing online community resisting repeated efforts to extinguish the online Soviet outpost.

Russian nostalgia for the Soviet empire is part of the story. Nashi, or Ours, is a pro-Kremlin youth group that gained notoriety for raucous protests against Kremlin critics. The group loyally praises President Vladimir Putin at nashi.su, though it denies its choice of the .su domain was meant to send a political message.

Many web entrepreneurs also see potential profits in the domain, grabbing instantly recognisable names already claimed in other, better known domains.

A small Moscow car repair shop that specialises in Ford vehicles boasts a home page at ford.su, while the owner of apple.su is a Muscovite who said he is ready to swap it for a new laptop computer.

Vladimir Khramov, a network administrator from Moscow, said he bought microsoft.su last year simply to acquire an easy-to-remember ending for his email address.

While Khramov insists he "did not buy it for reselling," others are out to make a quick ruble. Yan Balayan registered a number of high-profile addresses, including ussr.su, stalin.su and kgb.su - he's asking for 30,000 dollars each (£15,000), but stands ready to haggle.

With few exceptions - namely, the tech-savvy Baltic state of Estonia - internet penetration is relatively low in the former Soviet republics. Russia's Public Opinion Foundation says that only 27% of Russian adults use the internet and only about 12% of the adults on any given day.

Yet many internet entrepreneurs are passionate about the .su domain, even as others are scornful of it as a relic of the past, saying it doesn't deserve the same status as .ru for Russia, .uk for the United Kingdom or .fr for France.

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