Internet in Russia

Internet in Russia, or Russian Internet (Russian: российский Интернет, which means "Russia-related Internet"), and sometimes Runet (a portmanteau of "Russian" and "Internet"), is the part of the Internet that is related to Russia. As of 2015^[update], Internet access in Russia is available to businesses and home users in various forms, including dial-up, cable, DSL, FTTH, mobile, wireless and satellite.

As of 2020^[update], 122,488,468 Russians (85% of the country's total population) were Internet users. As of September 2020^[update], Russia ranked 47th among the world's countries by the fixed broadband Internet access speed, with an average download speed of 75.91 mbit/s, and 88th by mobile network Internet access speed, with 22.83 mbit/s. According to Freedom House, the Internet in Russia is "Not Free" as of 2019^[update]. In September 2011, Russia overtook Germany on the European market with the highest number of unique visitors online. In March 2013, a survey found that Russian had become the second-most commonly used language on the web after English.

Russians are strong users of social networks, of which Odnoklassniki.ru (used by 75% of 25–35-year-old Russians in 2009) and VKontakte are the most popular. LiveJournal has also been long popular. Online gaming is widespread.

Retrospectively, networking of data in the Russian language can be traced to the spread of mail and journalism in Russia, and information transfer by technical means came with the telegraph and radio. An 1837 sci-fi novel The Year 4338: Petersburg Letters, by the 19th-century Russian philosopher Vladimir Odoevsky, contains predictions such as "friends' houses are connected by means of magnetic telegraphs that allow people who live far from each other to talk to each other" and household journals "having replaced regular correspondence" with "information about the hosts’ good or bad health, family news, various thoughts and comments, small inventions, as well as invitations."

Computing systems became known in the USSR by the 1950s. Starting from 1952, work was conducted in the Moscow-based Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering (headed by Sergei Lebedev) on automated missile defense system which used a computer network which calculated radar data on test missiles through central machine called M-40 and was interchanging information with smaller remote terminals about 100—200 kilometers distant. The scientists used several locations in the USSR for their works, the largest was a massive test range to the West from Lake Balkhash known as Sary Shagan. In the meantime amateur radio users all over USSR were conducting P2P connections with their comrades worldwide using data codes. Later, a massive automated data network called Express was launched in 1972 to serve the needs of Russian Railways.

From the early 1980s the All Union Scientific Research Institute for Applied Computerized Systems (VNIIPAS) was working to implement data connections over the X.25 telephone protocol to form the USSR-wide Academset. An official scientific Soviet digital data connection from VNIIPAS to Austria's IIASA existed since 1982, in 1982 and 1983 there were a series of world computer conferences at VNIIPAS initiated by the U.N. where the USSR was represented by a team of scientists from many Soviet Republics headed by biochemist Anatoly Klyosov. The other participating countries were the UK, USA, Canada, Sweden, FRG, GDR, Italy, Finland, Philippines, Guatemala, Japan, Thailand, Luxembourg, Denmark, Brazil and New Zealand.

Also, in 1983 the San Francisco Moscow Teleport (SFMT) was started by VNIIPAS and an American team which included Joel Schatz, Michael Kleeman and Chet Watson with initial financial support from Henry Dakin. SFMT provided email service using the PeaceNet platform and multi-language support. It also undertook several slowscan video links between the two countries, including supporting physicians such as UCLA's Bob Gale in treating patients exposed in the Chernobyl accident. It later founded a for profit phone and data provider SovAm (Soviet-American) Teleport in the later 80s. Meanwhile, on April 1, 1984 a Fool's Day hoax about "Kremlin computer" Kremvax was made in the English-speaking Usenet. There are reports of spontaneous Internet (UUCP and telnet) connections "from home" through X.25 in the USSR in as early as 1988. In 1990 a GlasNet non-profit initiative by the US-based Association for Progressive Communications sponsored Internet usage in several educational projects in the USSR (through Sovam).

The development of Internet infrastructure in Russia began with development of analog modem-based computer networks in Soviet cities, primarily in scientific institutions. The first one to connect UNIX email hosts country-wide (including Soviet Republics) was the Relcom organization which formed on August 1, 1990 at the Kurchatov nuclear physics institute in Moscow. They were functioning together with partner programming cooperative Demos, named after the Soviet-made DEMOS Unix-like operating system. In August 1990 they established regular email routing with an Internet node in Helsinki University over a paid voice line. The construction of Academset was also going on at the time with VNIIPAS being its central node which was connected internationally over X.25 since the early 1980s. FidoNet connections reportedly started in 1990.