Internet Resources for Eurasia, 2001 Edition

The Internet in Eurasia

fter a slowdown associated with the August 1998 collapse of the Russian ruble, the Internet appeared to have resumed a dynamic pace of growth in the year 2000 in Eurasia. In Russia, host computers connected to the Web grew by 64 percent in 2000, well ahead of the average 1997-2000 growth rate of 26 percent per annum. (See Table 1.) According to the results of a survey conducted by Russia’s National Institute for Social and Psychological Research, the number of Internet users in Russia now amounts to 10 million people, or roughly eight per cent of adult population of the country. The same article that reported this claimed that there are now nearly 1,000 Internet service providers in the country! If true, it gives the lie to the view that all Russian industries are monopolistic.[1]

More conservative estimates of Internet penetration in Russia come from the Gallup Media organization. A survey it conducted in September-October 2000 found that 2.4 million Russians used the Internet at least once a month, and 1.7 million (3.1 percent of the adult population) used it weekly.[2] 

Table 1 also shows that in the NIS as a whole the number of Internet host computers per country has been growing at approximately 30 percent annually over the past three years, but the growth rates vary widely. Stagnation seems to have been the story in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan although the data are incomplete. This would be consistent with the fact that both of these countries have been among the most aggressive in the region in seeking to restrict Internet access and bring it under tighter government control during the period in question.

Source: RIPE

Another way to look at the development of the Internet in Eurasia is in terms of connectivity, as measured by the number of host computers per 10,000 population. By this measure, Estonia surpasses Germany and France, with nearly 300 host computers per 10,000 people. Estonia is closely tied to Finland, one of the most “wired” countries in the world. It also happens to be the country which pursued the most “shock therapy” in the sense of dismantling the old command economy more rapidly and more completely than any other formerly Soviet republic. In fact, Russia is well behind all the Baltic countries in connectivity.  (See Chart 1.)

But in relation to its other former Soviet partners, Russia is far ahead, with more than 20 host servers per 10,000 population. As Chart 2 shows, connectivity is more than twice as high in Russia as in its nearest rival, Kyrgyzstan, and there is very little connectivity to speak of in countries like Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. (Uzbekistan is not on the chart because host computer counts were not available for the end of 2000. But as of 1999 it had only 386 Internet host computers for a population of 25 million, which would place it between Belarus and Tajikistan in the chart below.)

The SORM Problem

In Russia, the FSB (Federal Security Service, successor to the KGB) has established a program named SORM (in Russian, “System for the Conduct of Investigations and Field Operations”), which aims to give the FSB access to all computer communications and internal documents of Russian telcoms, including phone companies and Internet service providers. The technology developed by SORM would allow the FSB to monitor all e-mail communication and Internet-based data transfers, effectively bypassing the constitutionally required process of court authorization for wire-tapping of electronic communications. In addition, SORM requires ISPs in Russia to install the FSB surveillance link at their own expense, or risk closure. 

If  SORM poses a threat to privacy, free speech, and the Internet in Russia, programs similar to it launched by governments in some of the least democratic Soviet spinoffs—Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Belarus, others—pose even larger threats there, simply because civil society is relatively weaker and undeveloped. The facts on Internet surveillance and control are hard to come by for these countries, but recent events suggest that in most of Central Asia, for example, political factors will determine the growth, or stagnation, of the Internet more than economic ones. Needless to say, the Internet will tend to grow fastest where its development is least hampered by government controls, intervention, or regulation.

The Internet Access and Training Program

While recent trends in some former Soviet republics have swung against the spreading, open communication of the Internet, two U.S.-initiated programs in particular—one governmental, the other nongovernmental—have been contributing significantly to the growth of interconnectivity in the NIS over the past five years.

The late eighties saw the beginnings of U.S.-initiated programs to promote the use of e-mail and the development of public Internet access sites for students, academics, NGO staff, and others. Among the first of these was a project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, working together with IREX. A Russian organization named Vega Laboratory began developing open e-mail facilities for scholars at the State Historical Public Library in Moscow. The program soon went beyond Moscow to other cities, and other nations of the NIS, and to civic organizations as well as academic ones. It combined Internet training with providing access.[3]

Today Project Harmony of Vermont runs Internet access and training programs (IATP) about 30 centers in cities throughout Russia, while IREX runs roughly twice that number in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.  Funding for this program has come primarily from the U.S. government, but the Soros foundations, as well as Carnegie, have also supported it.[4]

The Soros Open Society Institute (OSI) has also made its own direct contribution in this area. Its $100-million partnership with the Russian federal government, begun in 1996, has helped 33 universities and technical schools in provincial centers across the country develop Internet access. The Russian government pledged to supply 256-kbps connectivity at each center, while OSI-Russia funded the costs of computer hardware, administration and training, and outreach programs. The last two of the 33 centers, in Vladivostok and Makhachkala, became operational in late 1999, well ahead of the 2001 deadline. These sites not only serve their principal academic hosts, but also act as ISPs to satellite public institutions in each locality: schools, libraries, hospitals, museums, and municipal governments.

Future Directions: Civic Networking, Virtual Foundations?

In a region whose inhabitants value science and technical training so highly, there is a large cadre of technical talent with which to “build out” the Internet. The scarce factor to date has appeared to be fiscal and political stability.

But must development of the Internet in the NIS wait until that stability arrives? Can it not start on a small scale and perhaps even “build out” public institutions and behaviors of civil society at a very local level, which in turn would feed the larger river of stability on a national scale? A recent initiative of Friends and Partners[5] is premised on this assumption (or hope). Its Russian Civic Networking Program (RCNP) is a “cooperative Russia-U.S. project to promote development and wide-spread availability of advanced telecommunications technologies and civic networking to enhance the delivery of social services and generally serve public interests; to promote access to government information and increase civic participation; and to support the advancement of a nationwide civic networking infrastructure in Russia.”

RCNP is now at work in six Russian cities—Chelyabinsk, Samara, and Sergiev Posad, Voronezh, Obninsk, and Kazan—and achievements have reportedly exceeded the organizers’ expectations. Early efforts concentrated on establishing the Internet connection, developing public access points, and training citizens in how to use networked computers, but each city has taken its own direction after that. For a review of developments since then, go to the F&P page, www.friends-partners.org/civnet/index.htm, and follow the links to each city from there.

A project called the Virtual Foundation represents one of the more innovative uses of the Internet in support of international philanthropy. The Virtual Foundation is made up of a consortium of international NGOs with extensive experience administering grants. NGOs submit project proposals to a local office of one the consortium members where the proposal is vetted. If approved, it is then passed on to the foundation’s board of directors for further review. If approved at this level by the board, the proposal is uploaded to the Virtual Foundation’s Internet site (www.virtualfoundation.org).

People visiting the site can review a variety of proposals and either fund a project in its entirety or make a contribution that will be pooled with donations from others. Once sufficient funds have been raised for a particular project, a grant is made through the consortium member’s local office in the region. That office assumes all the normal grant-making responsibilities to ensure that there is accountability for all contributions received. The Internet also enables the NGO to keep its donors informed about progress on their project.

The IATP program is an example of a largely successful effort to help spread the infrastructure of the Internet in previously closed societies. The Russian Civic Networking Project and the Virtual Foundation represent two examples of applications that are now building on this established and growing infrastructure.

How many other projects like these are there? How many more will there be as connectivity grows in the NIS? The answers to these questions—partly provided by Internet Resources for Eurasia—will also provide an answer to the larger question of the long-term effect of the Internet on civil society worldwide.

 The technology is so new that predicting even five years ahead is hazardous. It is possible, however, that the Internet—contrary to predictions of some doomsayers—will invigorate people’s sense of civic responsibility at all levels of action: local, national, and international. In Russian cities with civic networks, for example, it is possible that the Internet will encourage a degree of accountability and transparency in public institutions that a weak and often compromised local media has so far not been able to bring about. 

At the international level, the Internet holds the promise of greatly enhancing the outreach both of humanitarian and advocacy organizations, in part through efforts like the Virtual Foundation. Of course, Doctors without Borders, Human Rights Watch, CARE, and other organizations of that size, are relatively large and have long had budgets for marketing and outreach. But smaller, more local efforts in “remote” countries like Tajikistan may well be able to draw on international donors to a degree never before possible, thanks to the technology of the Internet. Some of the resources included in this edition of Internet Resources for Eurasia, especially those in the Internet Toolbox section, suggest a variety of ways that websites can become highly interactive marketing and communication tools. The Internet’s growing capacity to coordinate widely dispersed activities and disseminate information instantaneously and inexpensively—in print, photo, video, and audio forms—cannot help but strengthen, it would seem, existing trends toward more international or global expressions of civic responsibility and social activism

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