After the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, the domain was expected to begin a phase-out process similar what the domains for Czechoslovakia (.cs) and Yugoslavia (.yu) went through. No phase-out process took place because there was no country code top-level domain name assigned for Russia until 1994, when the country would be assigned the .ru domain. After the introduction of the .ru domain, the Soviet domain was to be withdrawn by ICANN, but it was kept at the request of the Russian government.
