Many sites provide instructions on "Cyrillicizing" your computer, including Teach Your Computer to Read Russian, Cyrillic Instructions (by Paul Gorodyansky), and George Washington University's German and Slavic Department.

To use sites that are in Cyrillic (Russian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, etc.), you must be able to correctly encode your browser to "read" Cyrillic.  In Microsoft Internet Explorer, you must choose "View," "Fonts" and then select the appropriate Cyrillic encoding.  With Netscape Communicator, the task is also quite easy.  After accessing the site, choose "View," "Encoding" (or "Character Set" in Communicator 4.5 or above), and then select from the options (KOI8-R, ISO-8859-5, Windows-1251).  The page will then reload.  Unless you are informed by the site which option is best, begin with Windows-1251.  If the site does not become legible, try another encoding option until it is recognizable.

If you have questions on connecting to the web while abroad, writing or reading e-mail in Cyrillic, or other similar issues, go to the IREX site.  If you receive e-mail that you cannot decode, go to the Design.ru e-mail decoder. Copy and paste the text into the decoder and it will "translate" the text.