AI Summary
5 min readIn 1990, a physicist named Alexei Soldatov, working at a nuclear research facility in Moscow, registered the domain .su for the Soviet Union. Fifteen months later, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The domain did not. Over the next three decades, .su became a zombie top-level domain—a digital relic of a dead country that evolved into a haven for cybercriminals, Soviet nostalgists, and legitimate holdouts alike. Soldatov, the man who built the USSR's first internet and kept .su running independently for 30 years, refused to hand it over to the Russian state when a 2019 law brought it under government control. He was convicted of abuse of power in 2024 and sentenced to two years in a penal colony at age 72. While he was inside, ICANN announced .su would be phased out by 2030. He was released in May 2025 after his sentence was converted to a fine.
The Man Who Registered a Dead Country
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **The Zombie Domain Is Born** - The Soviet Union registers the .su top-level domain in 1990, just 15 months before the USSR dissolves.
- 2 (01:58) **The Country Dies, the Domain Lives** - The USSR collapses in December 1991, but .su is never retired.
- 3 (03:36) **Meet the Man Who Built It** - Alexei Soldatov, a physicist and sysadmin, not a dissident, becomes the de facto steward of .su.
- 4 (08:55) **The Ungovernable Wild West** - .su becomes a haven for three groups: Soviet nostalgists, legacy researchers, and cybercriminals.
- 5 (12:21) **The Exposed.su Data Leak** - In 2013, a hacker posts the financial records of 16 high-profile Americans on Exposed.su.
- 6 (15:12) **The Cultural and Criminal Melting Pot** - At its peak, .su hosts over 111,500 sites, mixing nostalgia, legitimate use, and hardcore cybercrime.
- 7 (16:17) **The Sovereign Internet Law and the Power Struggle** - Russia's 2019 "sovereign internet law" designates .su as part of the national domain zone, requiring state-managed control.
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Show Notes
Yes I know, I know it's a TLD. Don't worry, we get to it. In September 1990, a Soviet physicist named Alexey Soldatov registered a domain name for a country that would cease to exist fifteen months later. What happened to .su in the 35 years since is a story about cybercrime, Soviet nostalgia, internet governance, and one man who built Russia's internet — and went to prison rather than hand it over.
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