veteran.r52.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod chapter of the Russian Union of Afghan War Veterans, hosted in the Nizhny Novgorod domain zone r52.ru. The organization that owned the site was founded in 1991 and worked to help veterans of the war in Afghanistan and the families of those killed[1]. Its Nizhny Novgorod connection also follows from the home page text itself: veterans were registered "across the city and the region," and apartments were allocated to families with the involvement of the regional administration[1]. In the available Web Archive snapshots, the site is documented from April 2003 to April 2006[1][3].

What the site looked like

Judging by the browser window title, the site was divided into sections: the title bar combined the organization's name with the name of the open section — ".:. Russian Union of Afghan War Veterans .:. About the Union"[1]. The homepage served as the "About the Union" section — a short notice a few lines long, with no news feed, no forum, and no visitor counters in the archived text.

The entire content of the home page fit into a few lines. As the home page stated, "The Union was founded in 1991" (without a preposition in the original), and "the main task is providing assistance to veterans of the war in Afghanistan, and to the families of those killed"[1]. This was followed by the organization's figures: about 7,000 veterans of the Afghan war were registered across the city and the region, including 156 families of the killed, 125 disabled veterans, and 3 missing in action[1]. A program of medical and social rehabilitation had been running since 1999, and with the help of the regional administration more than 160 families had received apartments[1].

Contact details — address, phone number, email — are absent from the archived home page text in every snapshot. The only technical credit appeared in the 2003 snapshot: the line "Coding by Teamoty Brane Inc." at the very bottom of the page[1]. In the 2004 and 2006 snapshots this line is already gone[2][3].

A page that did not change for three years

The site's main feature becomes clear when the snapshots are compared. The home page text in April 2003, September 2004, and April 2006 matches word for word, down to the numbers — apart from the developer credit, which appeared only in 2003[1][2][3]. The number of registered veterans, the number of families of the killed, disabled veterans, and those missing in action did not change by a single unit over three years, nor did the mention of 160 families that had received apartments[2][3]. The only recorded change over the site's entire lifespan was the disappearance of the developer credit after 2003[1][2].

This is a typical early-2000s format for a nonprofit organization's business-card site: the page was put up once as a notice that the organization existed and what it did, and it then continued to exist without updates.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site entered our sample of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet not through a traffic ranking but through the directory listing of the nn.ru catalog — it does not appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter, and we have no data on its traffic (see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating). The domain veteran.r52.ru does not appear in the results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote[4].

This standing is understandable: a site with no updates, no services, and no interactive sections did not draw an audience and did not take part in the contest life of the local network. Its value lay elsewhere — it recorded facts about the organization and the scale of its work in figures that would otherwise have remained only in internal documents.

How it closed

The last home page snapshot in the Web Archive is dated April 5, 2006[3]. In total, the Web Archive index for this address holds, by our sample, 33 records. Checking the domain showed that veteran.r52.ru no longer exists: the site closed, leaving no successor at another address and no trace of a move in our data. From the site's three-year life, a few lines of text survive — a notice about a union founded in 1991, and a handful of numbers with which the organization described itself to the Nizhny Novgorod internet.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2006 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet voting results, 2004 (archive)