From Soviet Cybernetics to Regional Internet Histories

We invite you to a discussion and presentation of a special thematic issue of the journal Internet Histories, prepared based on the results of the international conference held at the Center for Urban History in October 2024.

The discussion will feature Svitlana Matviyenko, one of the issue's editors, and authors Oleksa Balyura, Maryna Malecheniuk, and Bohdan Shumylovych.

During the event, we will discuss how to make sense of the history of the Internet in the post-Soviet space, what the discontinuities and continuities of digital infrastructures and forms of knowledge mean, and whether there are grounds to speak not of a single Internet, but of “Internets.”

The pervasiveness and ubiquity of the Internet are often taken for granted today—as something that requires no special attention and is always readily available. We turn to the web every day when we're looking for answers to our questions, checking the weather forecast, or reading the latest news. However, the interconnection between the development of the Internet and social and economic processes, political regimes, the spread of propaganda, and the resilience and formation of grassroots communities reveals that the Internet is not a neutral infrastructure. Since the 1990s, faster and cheaper Internet access has enabled the growing exploitation of platform labor and a noticeable militarization of the Internet through cyberattacks, breaches of digital infrastructure, and surveillance. The efforts of corporations and states to control parts of the Internet infrastructure both within and beyond national borders have led to constant tension and the reconfiguration of existing networks.

Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to research on the cultural, social, political, and technological history of the Internet and related digital cultures. This special issue, edited by Miglė Bareikytė, Svitlana Matviyenko, and Taras Nazaruk, brings together texts by researchers exploring the discontinuities and continuities of the cybernetic legacy of the Soviet Union and the former socialist bloc, which shaped the specific trajectories of the Internet’s early development in Central and Eastern European countries. The articles published in this issue illustrate the multifaceted history of the Internet’s formation and transformation across various post-Soviet contexts. It also highlights recent sociopolitical and infrastructural transformations.

Credits

Cover Image: Internet service provider and paging equipment located at the Lysychansk Radio and Television Station / a recording of the television program "Events" by the "Systema" television and radio company / collection of Vitaliy Matukhno / Urban Media Archive of the Center for Urban History