This paper discusses the needs of the Russian academic and research community in non-commercial networking, as well as the technical base for it. It also describes developments in SUEARN (Soviet Union/European Academic and Research Network) and FREEnet (Network For Research, Education and Engineering).< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>