"School" is usually associated with an organized and stable environment. For years, the educational environment in the Soviet Union could be described as stagnant, with new ideas and new technology rejected. But after the collapse of the Soviet Empire, new ideas, approaches, and tools – including the Internet – began to trickle into the classroom.

About five years ago, there were only a few elementary and secondary schools in the former Soviet regions using electronic mail. Mostly, they were participants in experimental international pen-pal projects or student exchanges. Western partners provided computers and modems and paid for connectivity. Schools that did have access were often isolated from others connected to the Net and communicated only with their partners within a specific project.

By 1993, more school officials were beginning to realize that e-mail and the Internet can be good teaching tools. Small, specialized dial-up bulletin-board systems, such as PilotNet in Moscow, appeared, providing specialized content for schools and an e-mail gateway to the Internet. The most progressive school principals began to look for ways to support network connectivity for their schools. But aside from a few exceptions in the wealthier and more independent outlying regions, such as Kalmykiya, only a few schools in the capital cities enjoyed the ability to communicate by computer.

Since that time, the growth in the number of connected schools has generally followed the rate of network developments in each region and country.

Estonia, one of the most "wired" countries in Central and Eastern Europe, was the first country of the former Soviet Union to bring the World Wide Web into schools and to use the Internet for everyday school activities (see the Web site at http://www.edu.ee). One of the most active Estonians in educational networking, Anne Villems, wrote in a recent Internet newsgroup posting, "We have a bit less than half of [our] schools connected to the Internet, [so far]. Our plan is to connect almost all of them this year."

In the other Baltic states, the situation is less advanced, but the region also has a comparatively large number of schools participating in Internet projects, some sponsored by local Soros Foundation offices.

In Russia, school networking is growing haphazardly in those places where active and enthusiastic people keep it alive and growing. For example, Krasnoyarsk and Tomsk have intracity school networks in which local schools interact among themselves. Voronezh Pedagogic University has announced upcoming on-line contest for students in the style of subject-based quiz shows, designed for nationwide participation. Meanwhile, individual schools continue to interact with their individual foreign partners.

Belarus and Ukraine participated in some international ecological projects by e-mail during the Gorbachev era. Since that time, active teachers have continued to work on the Net. Because the overall development of the Internet has been somewhat slower in those countries, the number of children’s organizations on line has not grown very far beyond those early participants.

In the Central Asian and Transcaucasian countries, the word "Internet" is hardly known among schoolteachers, and few cities even have live Internet connectivity. Computers are rare in schools as well.

In general, the number of schools on the Net is growing steadily, but this growth is self-organizing and chaotic. Today, most of the real work of bringing schools on line is done on the personal initiative of individual teachers and enthusiastic parents. Meanwhile, government officials discuss ways to bring new information technologies into the classroom in principle, and researchers in the field of education write articles and dissertations on the possible impact of Internet technology in education.

Sometimes local governments support networking activity with rather limited local funds (for an example in St. Petersburg, see http://www.nit.spb.su). International organizations, universities and research institutes continue to support "their" schools – the ones they helped connect to the Internet.

Russian physicist Andrey Sebrant was one of those pioneers who strongly believed in the necessity of making the World Wide Web available to teachers and children. He started what is known as the "edutainment" page on Moscow’s GlasNet (http://www.glasnet.ru/~asebrant/edut/edu_h.html; see also http://www.glasnet.ru/glasweb/rus/educat.html).

Another Moscow-based Internet service provider, Redline (http://www.redline.ru), actually came on line with partial funding from the Ministry of Education. One of the things on Redline’s site is Uchitelskaya gazeta ("teachers’ newspaper"), which was one of the most popular newspapers for teachers in the Soviet Union and is still providing information and guidance for Russian teachers.

Still, the audience for those resources remains small. For most schools, computers with modems are just ornaments for the principal’s office – if they are available at all. Those Russian schools that are on line often only have information about a few other schools and projects on the Net with which they can communicate.

Since primary and secondary education is still largely state-funded and -organized, it will take government commitment to the Internet of the kind seen in Russian higher education in order for it to become a common educational tool across Russia’s vast and diverse landscape.