<story><title>Why the Soviet Union did not build a nationwide computer  network (2008) [pdf]</title><url>http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch-InterNyet.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>GoToRO</author><text>In Romania you would get arrested if you had a walkie-talkie. The fixed phones were installed only in the homes of people that were part of the regime (even if you had a very simple role like handling money). They invested some on PCs but only until it became clear that they allowed easy access to information. Then it was dead.&lt;p&gt;So in my view no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. Keep people in the dark and they might be happy with their misserable life. Even people closer to the regime believed they had a good life because they received bananas and oranges before every Christmas...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vumgl</author><text>As horrible as the regime was, you would not get arrested for having a walkie-talkie. And anyone could get a phone line, except there was a looong wait (years). And most likely you will end up on a &amp;quot;coupled&amp;quot; line, meaning that you and your neighbor will share the same line - you can listen in to your neighbor&amp;#x27;s conversation simply by picking up the phone.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why the Soviet Union did not build a nationwide computer  network (2008) [pdf]</title><url>http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch-InterNyet.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>GoToRO</author><text>In Romania you would get arrested if you had a walkie-talkie. The fixed phones were installed only in the homes of people that were part of the regime (even if you had a very simple role like handling money). They invested some on PCs but only until it became clear that they allowed easy access to information. Then it was dead.&lt;p&gt;So in my view no communist country would invest in a national network because that would make information easier to transmit and this would undermine the regime. Keep people in the dark and they might be happy with their misserable life. Even people closer to the regime believed they had a good life because they received bananas and oranges before every Christmas...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>andrepd</author><text>&amp;gt;So in my view no communist country would invest in a national network&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a shame that reality contradicts you then. See Allende&amp;#x27;s &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Project_Cybersyn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Project_Cybersyn&lt;/a&gt;. In a much less positive vein, see China&amp;#x27;s rapidly developing communications infrastructure (hand in hand with massive surveillance and censorship)</text></comment>