alt Hacker News"computers were everywhere in the 80s, just not readily available to private owners"
Agreed on that, and access to a computer system, e.g ES mainframe or SM family was not a problem for people who wanted it. I was in high school in mid-80s. I found a fortran book in the library, and it took me very little time to get access to the university-owned SM-1420, RSX-11, and a fortran compiler. That same lab ran free programming classes in the evening with faculty volunteers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS
"But by the early 1970s the idea of transcending the status quo was abandoned by the Soviet leadership, who felt the system threatened Party control of the economy."
And that was that, for the idea of connecting Soviet computer networks or directly connecting people in the Soviet union (without party-controlled channels in between).