t fields of technological advances, after the first push the wheel of demand instantaneously gains its speed. In the span of three years 86% of non-government organisations based in large cities had a web page. Even though the above seems to show an immense change, there is still a boundary between Russia and the rest of the world, even on the web. There is such a thing as a Russian Internet; most russian users dont go beyond that. The most obvious reason is a language barrier, as well as the letter difference. Unfortunately these are not the only reasons for the lack of interest towards the foreign Internet; since Russia is an enormously large country, most of its inhabitants feel that it is the whole world. Most of these people will never have the chance to go anywhere outside of Russia, so they show ignorance towards the life and events outside of it. In order to be able to surf on the Russian Internet and be able to take advantage of all the information offered, one has to have a bilingual keyboard; with both Russian and Latin alphabets. The names of the sites are using Latin letters, that is the requirement to get on the World Wide Web. The information is usually in Russian. This causes a problem, because if one doesnt have a special translating system installed, the russian letters turn into chaotic symbols and it is impossible to have access to the information on this site. Some sites are getting a double version, for both Russian and English-speaking users; they are the ones that are aimed at the west. Anyone who has ever gone on the Internet has used such browsers as Yahoo or AltaVista, they obviously help one to get around the net and find relevant information. There are Russian equivalents of these search engines, based on the same system of usage. The first Russian Web Directory was Russia On The Net, it still exists, but it is rarely used, since more advanced systems have been developed. The most well known browser is Apo...
