I think this is interesting. The value of tcp/ip was the ability to form logical networks over and across existing physical/electronic networks. That only makes sense if you have an abundance of physical networks to start with.
In real world, we in USSR had very basic X.25 network (built by VNIIPAS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VNIIPAS) in late 80s, with 2 links to Europe (via Finland and Austria) and X.25 network for universities (Akademset). They were many years behind even European networks and were built on very unreliable hardware. TCP/IP came to Russia only after 1991, no one actually used it before even for LANs (although it was available in stolen source code from BSD Unix).
In 1991 they played with local TCP/IP in Moscow, in 1992 started to make dialup calls to Finland with SLIP instead of pure UUCP. Only in 1993 several permanent TCP/IP links from Russia (Demos, SOVAM Teleport, etc) to the West were finally established.
Please also check detailed history: http://ru.arf.ru/Hrono/index.html
12-19 August 1990.