"Out with the old, and in with the new..."
"Russia's tricolour tonight replacing the red flag over the Kremlin..."
"A country re-named and re-born, and now in the hands of Boris Yeltsin."
That was back in 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist after just under 69 years
of existence.
Or, that’s what most will have you believe.
Countries don’t just pop into existence and likewise, don’t just pop out of existence
either.
When did the Soviet Union officially end for example?
Was it on the supposedly official date on 26 December 1991 when the Supreme Soviet voted
the country and itself out of existence?
Was it later that day when the Russian Tricolour replaced the Soviet flag?
Or was it the day before when Gorbachev resigned and handed his powers over to Yeltsin?
Or, if you want to go back even further there are a whole range of different dates when
it could be argued that the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
But I would argue that the Soviet Union has managed to survive for a lot longer, through
a strange loophole in the modern world…
Many people have taken to creating their own countries by setting up a personal website,
but few realise that aside from this absurd unrealistic approach to statehood, that the
online world is a host to many strange remnants of past countries.
For example, the German Democratic Republic could have lived on through its internet TLD
or Top-Level Domain, but it was never properly implemented into the internet’s infrastructure
before the reunification of Germany, so today we only have the remaining TLD of West Germany
which is still used by Re-unified Germany: .de.
This is where we find our remnant of the Soviet Union: .su.
SU was created only a year before the Soviet Union dissolved, but nearly 30 years later,
here we are.
How did this happen?
After 1989 a set of new internet domains was created within Europe, including .pl for Poland),
.cs for Czechoslovakia, .yu for Yugoslavia and .dd East Germany.
Along with these TLDs, was a domain for the USSR – .su, though initially, the Soviet
Union was slated to receive.
ussr, however, this changed when the .su domain was proposed by a 19-year-old Finnish student.
The next year however, brought with it the dissolution of the Soviet Union and with it,
its constituent republics gained independence, which should have caused the domain to begin
a phase-out process, as happened with the now defunct TLDs of East Germany, Czechoslovakia,
and Yugoslavia.
But, like mentioned earlier, the transition from Soviet Union to Russia was not a quick
change overnight, and as such, the now common Russian TLD dot RU was not created until 1993,
which left dot SU still in use by the Russian government and individuals.
After the Ru domain was introduced, dot SU was to be withdrawn by ICANN, as other defunct
domains have been, but at the behest and request of the Russian Government and various internet
users, the domain was kept active, and remains in use today.
So technically, a small part of the USSR still lives on…
A large chunk of SU domains are used for malicious purposes, such as movie pirating, as well
as many, many other very haram things.
But still operates because of the maybe not so equally large number of legitimate businesses
using SU domains.
So how do you get your own slice of the USSR exactly?
First: Set up an account with a Russian domain registrar such as RU Center.
Many domain stores on the internet claim that you can purchase a SU domain through them,
but this is often not possible, so be careful in order to not get scammed out of your precious
roubles.
Second: have your passport at the ready.
Anyone can but a SU domain, but you must have your passport number ready to give in order
too prove your identity, as well as a scan of either your passport, driver’s license
or similar ID to verify that you own the domain in question.
Third: For some reason DNS, which is a really basic function to point your domain to your
website and start using email addresses on your site is not free, so you gotta pay extra
for that unless you’re hosting your site with RU center.
So, buy that and set it up.
After these three steps, you should be good to go.
Congratulations!
You now own a little slice of what remains of the Soviet Union!
From what I found it’s actually cheaper to host a domain with RU-Center while paying
for a separate DNS, rather than using a more typical western provider like GoDaddy.
Even with all of the verification that goes on with the SU domain though, there still
are many suspect websites out there, so good luck trying to convince people to go to a
SU domain…
But you know what SU domain is safe to use?
My new website!
Located at Kaihatsu, that’s Kaihat.su, where you can find all of my videos, bonus content,
as well as a small Q&A about the channel and some tips for starting your own!
Check it out now at Kaihat.su!
Don’t forget that I’ve also got a twitter and discord!
Anyways that’s all for now, see you next time!
Do zavtra!