Describes Russia's specialized agencies, which are now actively engaged in their own research and development activities, surveys the influence of the 1989 political and economic changes on the structure and ideology of information networks, and describes VNTIC's current information activities.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>