[Air-L] Before Iran, Tunisia and Egypt, the Soviet coup attempt
Larry Press
lpress at csudh.edu
Mon Jan 31 21:02:37 PST 2011
The first example of network citizen journalism may have been during the
August 1991 coup attempt by eight high level Soviet officials. There
were two days of confrontation between demonstrators and troops, during
which all Russian media except Usenet news groups were shut down by the
authorities. Usenet, a precursor of today's Internet discussion forums,
carried traffic into, out of and within Russia (70 cities) during the
days of the coup attempt.
One of the quotes from that time foreshadows the Internet shut down in
Egypt today. Polina Antonova of RELCOM, the Unix distributor that
operated the network wrote:
"They try to close all mass media, they stopped CNN an hour ago, and
Soviet TV transmits opera and old movies. But, thank Heaven, they don't
consider RELCOM mass media or they simply forgot about it. Now we
transmit information enough to put us in prison for the rest of our life".
After two tense days, the coup failed and president Mikhail Gorbachev
was restored to power. For more on the role of the network during the
coup attempt, including links to archives of the traffic, see:
http://cis471.blogspot.com/2011/01/before-twitter-revolutions-there-was.html
Larry Press
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