"Thus the first cyber-activists were able to use this decentralized architecture and Usenet (developed in the USSR in 1982) to circumvent traditional censorship."
That should read, "re-inveneted in USSR".
Tom Truscott [0] and Jim Ellis [1] are the creators of Usenet. Bnews was indeed released in '82, using UUCP to exchange between machines. [2] This was before NNTP. In '95, Truscott and Ellis received the Flame award at USENIX.[3] Guess what for?
[3] 1995: "the third Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Tom Truscott, Steve Bellovin, and Jim Ellis for their work in creating USENET." ~ https://www.usenix.org/about/flame