Kremvax was originally a fictitious

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

site at the

Kremlin The Kremlin ( rus, Московский Кремль, r=Moskovskiy Kreml', p=ˈmɐˈskofskʲɪj krʲemlʲ, t=Moscow Kremlin) is a fortified complex in the center of Moscow founded by the Rurik dynasty, Rurik dynasty. It is the best known of th ...

, named like the then large number of Usenet

VAX VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The V ...

en with names of the form foo The terms foobar (), foo, bar, baz, and others are used as metasyntactic variables and placeholder names in computer programming or computer-related documentation. - Etymology of "Foo" They have been used to name entities such as variables, f ...
vax. Kremvax was announced on April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there by

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

leader

Konstantin Chernenko Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko uk, Костянтин Устинович Черненко, translit=Kostiantyn Ustynovych Chernenko (24 September 1911 – 10 March 1985) was a Soviet politician and the seventh General Secretary of the Commun ...

. The posting was actually forged by

Piet Beertema Piet Beertema (born 22 October 1943 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch Internet pioneer. On November 17, 1988 at 2:28 PM, he linked the Netherlands as the second country (shortly after France's INRIA) to NSFNET, a precursor to the Internet. Beertema was the ...

of CWI (in Amsterdam) as an

April Fool April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may ...

's prank—"because the notion that Usenet might ever penetrate the

Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its s ...

seemed so totally absurd at the time". Other fictitious sites mentioned in the

hoax A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...

were moskvax and kgbvax. The actual origin of the email was mcvax, one of the first European sites on the internet. Six years later Usenet was joined by demos.su, the first genuine site based in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

. Some readers needed convincing that the postings from it were not just another prank.

Vadim Antonov Vadim Antonov (russian: Антонов Вадим Геннадьевич) born May 25, 1965 is a Russian-American software engineer and entrepreneur. He is known for his work on operating systems, Internet backbone networks, network router hardw ...

, the senior programmer at Demos and the major poster from there until mid-1991, was quite aware of all this, and referred to it frequently in his own postings. Antonov later arranged to have the domain's gateway site named kremvax.demos.su, turning fiction into truth and, according to one account, "demonstrating that the hackish sense of humor transcends cultural barriers". Raymond, E. S.: "The

Jargon File The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) and others of the old ARPANET A ...

"
Kremvax entry
2006 The mid-1980s Usenet users were not aware of the official

X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet-switched data communication in wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, now ITU-T) in a series of drafts ...

computer connections between USSR and other countries, which had existed since 1980, primarily via

VNIIPAS The All Union Scientific Research Institute for Applied Automated Systems (VNIIPAS/ВНИИПАС) was a Soviet research institute that provided a computer network service, including international digital connections. It was the central node of ...

and

Academset Akademset (russian: Академсеть, Academic Network), or All-Union Academic network — was a computer network for providing digital connection of scientific and civil institutions across the USSR, that was established in 1978. In fact, i ...

Soviet bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...

countries and

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n hosts at

IIASA The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is an independent international research institute located in Laxenburg, near Vienna, in Austria. Through its research programs and initiatives, the institute conducts policy-o ...

and

IAEA The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established in 1957 ...

. In 1983, the ''San Francisco Moscow Teleport (SFMT)'' venture was created to maintain USSR-American digital connections via VNIIPAS with its own Usenet analogues later known as ''Sovamnet'' ("Soviet-American net"). In 1992, the company

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

, a commercial rival to VAX, gifted an own-made server to pioneer Soviet commercial network

RELCOM RELCOM or Relcom (russian: РЕЛКОМ, Релком), an acronym for "RELiable COMmunications" is a computer network in Russia. It was launched in the Soviet Union on August 1, 1990 in the Kurchatov Institute in collaboration with DEMOS co-operat ...

. The company demanded that the server was named ''KremlSun'', an

allusion Allusion is a figure of speech, in which an object or circumstance from unrelated context is referred to covertly or indirectly. It is left to the audience to make the direct connection. Where the connection is directly and explicitly stated (as ...

to then-legendary ''Kremvax'', and made a root DNS server for the

.su .su is an Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) that was designated for the Soviet Union (USSR) on 19 September 1990. Even though the Soviet Union itself was dissolved a mere 15 months later, the .su top-level domain remains in use to ...

domain. The conditions were met, and the server became one of the initial devices when forming the

Moscow Internet Exchange MSK-IX (Moscow Internet eXchange) is an Internet eXchange Point (IXP) with headquarters in Moscow, Russia. With over 549 connected networks and 3,37Tbps of peak traffic (November 2019), MSK-IX is one of the world's largest IXPs. According to th ...

, since then the largest Russian

Internet exchange point Internet exchange points (IXes or IXPs) are common grounds of IP networking, allowing participant Internet service providers (ISPs) to exchange data destined for their respective networks. IXPs are generally located at places with preexisting ...

. https://www.osp.ru/os/2004/08/185037

References

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External links

Original message archived on Google Groups

Computer-related introductions in 1984 1984 in Moscow April 1984 events in Europe Science and technology in Russia Usenet April Fools' Day Internet in Russia 1984 hoaxes Internet hoaxes Computer humor

See also

References

External links