From LANFRAN%VM1.YorkU.CA@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Fri Aug 23 14:22:37 1991 Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1991 09:54:23 EDT Reply-To: Education and information technologies Sender: Education and information technologies From: Sam Lanfranco Subject: Computer Networking and the Soviet Coup To: Multiple recipients of list EDUTEL I am posting this as a *SPECIAL* piece in the International Development set of postings. It is a demonstration of the potential in networking. ============ ORIGINAL POSTING BY ROGERS C. ============== The following story -- posted for reasons which should become obvious -- will appear in a newspaper Thursday and possibly on the Associated Press wire service if it was submitted by my editors. (RC) COMPUTER NETWORKS KEPT INFORMATION FLOWING DURING COUP By Rogers Cadenhead Fort Worth Star-Telegram Thursday, August 22, 1991 DENTON, Texas -- The message relayed from Moscow to a Soviet immigrant in the United States was brief and to the point. "You got out of here just in time," the Russian message said. "If those dogs win, for certain they'll throw us all in prison -- we distributed the proclamation of Yeltsin together with forbidden communiques from Interfax throughout the entire Soviet Union." The messenger signed off, "Greetings from the underground." The short note, spread throughout the West on computer networks, was one of many transmitted during the Soviet crisis. Borrowing a tactic used by Chinese students during the June 1989 Tiananmen Square uprisings, Soviets used electronic mail, or E-mail, as a tool against the takeover. While messages from Russian President Boris Yeltsin and other coup opponents were being sent throughout Asia, Europe and North America this week, the committee that tried to seize power either didn't know about, or couldn't keep up with, the instantaneous transmissions. Through database networks such as CompuServe, which set up a special discussion forum on the crisis, and InterNet, a worldwide network of universities, military sites and businesses, computer users transmitted firsthand reports of the crisis. Soviets also used the channels to transmit and read banned news reports from the Russian Information Agency, the Interfax news agency and Baltic nationalists. "Our net turned out to be a means of communication of the forces of resistance," one Muscovite said. "I am really proud of it, but it's really dangerous." The unprecedented connection was made possible by the introduction of thousands of personal computers into the Soviet Union under President Mikhail Gorbachev. This week, it put a kink into plans to control the flow of information. "It is a tribute to our modern Gutenberg revolution, computer-mediated communication, that at the darkest hour we were getting almost instant E-mail," said Sam Lanfranco, a network member at York University in Canada. "It allowed them to be everywhere and us to be there." GlasNet, a Soviet network, is named for the glasnost, or openness, that allowed its creation. It stayed on line throughout the crisis, one network director said, "maybe because GlasNet is quite new, and the Soviet Pinochets still are not aware of our existence." His name, like all those from the Soviet Union, have been omitted in this report to protect them, at the request of American computer organizers such as John Harlan. Harlan is director of the Russia and Her Neighbors network project, which has headquarters in South Bend, Ind. Soviets who regularly communicated with the West were surprised that they could still send electronic mail out of the country after the takeover. "They were foolish enough until now not to break E-mail link with West sites," one man wrote in halting English. "I think this won't last too long, but I think also that putsch won't last long also." During the apex of the crisis, eyewitness accounts were filed by protesters who attended rallies at the Russian Parliament, the white marble building that has come to be called the Russian White House. "Yesterday, impressions filled me with optimism," wrote one Soviet who sent many reports beginning, "Hello from Moscow!" "All those barricades and many people standing there and some tanks on Yeltsin's side made me feel more confident," he wrote yesterday morning. "When I came home last night after the curfew was imposed by the putschists, my wife disappointed me somehow. She sat home with my little daughter all the day and just watched TV and heard official reports. She is afraid that [the committee of coup leaders] has got the great power. As I told her all I saw, she calmed a little bit, but said that she thinks [the people] just haven't enough information. "For example, the big rally near the Russian White House -- many thousands people there -- were showed on TV as some group of 100-200 people without definite purposes." Some Soviets used the database networks to issue pleas for Western support. "We, the youth of this country, do not want anybody to bring back the past," one resident said in a message sent Tuesday at noon. "We need your moral support!" The FidoNet system, a worldwide hodgepodge of computer bulletin boards, brought messages from several cities. "It was big fun to hear and see on TV so nice comedian show like last press conference -- some very familiar to us," one man wrote yesterday, referring to the coup leaders. "That was really fun, to see such stupid faces and stupid talks. No one comedy can give so lot fun." From an American college, Chinese student Jie Liang offered tips for the Soviets based on his experiences with the Tiananmen Square protests. Liang, who did not not make clear whether he was in China or the United States at the time, said computer networks were a vital link in organizing the rallies and subsequent "Free China" protests. "Western sympathy amounts to little in changing the situation," he told Soviet members of the network. "The Soviet people are their own savior." Liang said that Yeltsin made the right move by calling for strikes. "This power is stronger than tanks in the long run," he wrote. He added that Americans and others interested in helping the popular revolt should use computer networks, fax machines and telephones to pour the truth into the Soviet Union. "At this heavy historic moment, Chinese people are standing by the Soviet people," he wrote. Despite the matters under discussion, the lightheartedness that typifies electronic mail chatter was still evident through the crisis. Keyboard smiles and smirks -- represented by :-) and ;-) and meant to be viewed sideways -- punctuated several messages, and a Leningrad man ended his messages with the sarcastic sign-off, "Don't worry, be happy." There was a :-) on many terminals yesterday when the news began circulating that the coup had begun unraveling. In E-mail to Doug Jones at the University of Iowa, the director of a Soviet network said he would send no more messages. Jones said, "As of the most recent contact I had, he said the coup is over and he was going to get some well-earned rest."