This paper seeks to understand who the authors of Lysenkoist biology curriculum and textbooks were, how they were recruited, and what their likely motivations were for joining the Lysenkoist camp. In particular, biology educators A.A. Shibanov and M.I. Mel’nikov developed and imposed the first Lysenkoist (“Michurinist”) curricula for primary and middle schools in 1938.  However, once published, these curricula were not to Lysenko's liking; Mel'nikov and Shibanov had smuggled in contemporary international understandings of evolutionary theory (mutations, Mendelian segregation, intraspecific competition, etc.), and the curricula had to be revised the following year.  Mel’nikov and Shibanov, although disciplined twice, quizzically retained their leading roles in curriculum and textbook development. From the outside, Lysenko’s educators looked like ‘winners’; however, as I hope to show, they were simultaneously tragic victims.

This talk examines the controversy over soil salinization that pitted proponents of drainage against promoters of Vasilii Vil’iams’ grassland rotations during the great “ideological discussions” that agitated scientific circles during late Stalinism. If the detractors of drainage lost, despite Trofim Lysenko’s triumph at the August 1948 session of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL), it was because the supporters of drainage offered a solution compatible with irrigation expansion projects. Lysenko, at the height of his fame, nonetheless had to agree with the partisans of drainage, correct his own theoretical convictions and disown his allies. This pragmatism allowed the ideological lock on the extension of irrigation to be gradually lifted. This controversy shows that, despite a considerable ideological polarization, the discussions could be resolved with the adoption of pragmatic economic parameters.

In this chapter I examine visions of the “new man” as an important component—a major meme, if you will—of Bolshevik culture during the 1920s and ‘30s, focusing on the role played by the life sciences—experimental medicine, experimental psychology, and experimental biology—in the formation and propagation of such visions. Through a comparative analysis of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 classic Brave New World and a little-known novel, Valley of New Life, published by Russian physician Fedor Il’in four years prior, I explore the surprising similarities, as well as certain telling differences, between the “new man” visions prevalent in the cultures of their respective homelands. I argue that during the first decades of the twentieth century, specialized, often quite arcane, new scientific knowledge about human origins and human nature (both body and soul) became transformed into the key element of a particular cultural resource hidden under the general label “new man.” I further analyze three interconnected processes involved in the formation of this cultural resource: the production of new knowledge; its translation into a language accessible to the general public; and its uses by a variety of interested parties, from educators and politicians to philosophers and literati.
Chapter text in English and in Russian

В истории российских интеллектуалов периодически происходят «консервативные повороты», приходящие на смену реформистским и утопическим эпохам и приносящие ориентацию на прошлое и «традиционные ценности». Один из таких поворотов произошел в 1970-е гг. (увлечение позднесоветской интеллигенции религией и национализмом), второй начался в 2000-е и окончательно оформился в 2014 г. В докладе будут рассмотрена биография Валентины Федоровны Чесноковой (1934-2010), известной также под псевдонимом Ксения Касьянова, автора работы «О русском национальном характере», участвовавшей в создании идеологии русского национализма в 1970-е гг. В 1990-е гг. вокруг нее сформировался круг интеллектуалов, сыгравших роль в идеологической и политической подготовке консервативного поворота 2000-х гг. Доклад опирается на работу по изданию мемуаров ученого (Чеснокова В.Ф. (Ксения Касьянова) «Возвращение во своя си. Воспоминания. Стихотворения. Эссе». Под ред. С.С. Алымова и Е.В. Косыревой. М.: Нестор-История, 2022, в печати).

Since its formal opening in 1963, the Novosibirsk FMSh is celebrated for its pedagogical innovation: gathering selected children to live on campus to be taught the university level curriculum by scientists. In this talk, I focus on the tensions and conflicts between the elements of this pedagogical project. Associating the notions of giftedness, the institution of family, and the processes of mathematization in post-war sciences, and drawing on media and fictional representations, I aim to situate the school’s experiences within broader debates on scientific-technical intelligentsia and late Soviet modernity. I ask: How did the realization of transformative aspirations depend on the dynamic of inclusion and exclusion? Who were the children liberated from and with what consequences? Finally, how does the history of this pedagogical project illuminate the late Soviet ideas about creativity and intelligence as these categories translate across 1991 and are adopted into the brain-drain routines of the post-Soviet context? 

Доклад посвящен распространению в СССР американской технологии управления проектами PERT, ядро которой составляют сетевые графики. Мода на них охватила мир советских ведомств и организаций во второй половине 1960-х гг., когда в визуализациях цикла реализации проекта распознали панацею от сбоев в организации централизованного материально-технического снабжения и универсальный некапиталоемкий способ повышения эффективности работы. Мы фокусируемся на применении технологии PERT и специфике ее перевода на язык советского планирования и управления, включая скорость перевода, способы популяризации PERT и имплементации советской копии («Системы СПУ») в планирование строительных работ и в работу Госплана СССР. Сетевые графики рассматриваются в комплексе с вычислительной техникой и алгоритмизацией планирования как часть системы координации управления экономикой. Стремительное распространение в СССР американкой организационной технологии не было простым заимствованием, но сопровождалась попытками её приспособления под задачи и объекты управления, которые не были распространены на родине PERT.

В СССР научные учреждения формально принадлежали тому или иному ведомству: гражданскому (Академия наук, отраслевые ведомства, университеты) или относящемуся к оборонно-промышленному комплексу (Министерство среднего машиностроения, Министерство обороны, т.д.). На практике значительная часть даже академических институтов полностью или частично работала по закрытой тематике. Но имелись и обратные примеры, когда в ряде закрытых организаций – т.н. «почтовых ящиках» – велись работы по совершенно непрофильным для них направлениям. Благодаря поддержке руководства этих организаций и коллег возник интереснейший феномен советской эпохи, – ученые, нередко из числа опальных и неугодных власти, именно в закрытых научных учреждениях получали возможность развивать актуальные и перспективные, но не имевшие официального статуса, направления, в том числе и не военного характера.

В докладе рассматривается механизм распространения нового знания, затрагивающего стабильные основания современного археологического знания. В процессе своей работы археологи постоянно производят новое знание, распространение которого может восприниматься профессиональным сообществом как неудобное или неприемлемое. Поэтому они нуждаются в существовании безопасного канала распространения такой информации, который позволит избегать эскалации конфликтов. Такой канал информации может существовать в форме системы знаков несерьезности. На примере XXII заседания Тверского археологического методического семинара демонстрируется, что система знаков несерьезности, используемая археологами, может иметь карнавальные черты. В докладе также рассматривается ряд способов отрицания серьезности, используемых в академической коммуникации при обсуждении амбивалентных проблем.

Participant-presenters of this roundtable will reflect on the role that theoretical frameworks play in our analysis of case studies in the history of Russian and European science. Increasingly, scholars in STS have applied inter-disciplinary methodologies to their research to better integrate the history of technology, science, and medicine into both broader historical narratives, as well as complex current schools of analytical methods. Each roundtable participant, a senior historian/socio-cultural theorist in the field, will reflect on their own past methodologies as well as how theory has been serving as frameworks for their current work. They will also attempt to briefly comment on how the current situation in Eastern Europe/Russia might imminently affect not only their access to primary sources, but potentially their methodological frameworks as well. Each participant will speak for about 12-15 minutes, then the moderator will help guide and channel these overviews and meditations into a general discussion about the role of theory in the history of science.

Responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this panel re-examines changing approaches to the history of Soviet knowledge exploring the epistemological, ethical and practical aspects of doing historical research into Soviet science and technology. Much of the history of Soviet science and technology has been written from a Russia-centric position, in this way reproducing the colonial relation between the Soviet centres and the periphery. This position is no longer tenable: Russia’s invasion in Ukraine has evidenced Kremlin’s lasting colonial claim on the neighbouring countries. There is a risk that a continued focus on Soviet power centres will replicate the Cold War rationale of “knowing the enemy,” as detailed by David Engerman. At the same time, it is imperative to understand the developments and failures of scientific modernisation of Russia and the ways it is entangled with the former Soviet republics. The question is how to conduct this research in an ethical way, developing new epistemological approaches and practical strategies of accessing primary sources. The roundtable participants will reflect on their experience of researching the intersections of Soviet science and governance in Central Asian, Baltic countries and Ukraine. Each participant will speak for about 10 minutes, leaving an ample time for discussion.

Imperial Russian scientists and Soviet scientists used to be the forerunners of meteorological and climatological studies. Soviet climatologist Mikhail Budyko was among the first world-wide who predicted the inevitability of climatic changes due to human action. But when the first IPCC report came out, Soviet science appeared only marginally in it. This talk will explore the ways Soviet climatologists modelled global climate in order to grapple with the new environmental challenges but also to participate in the accelerating race about climate knowledge. It argues that Soviet climate sciences were products of the Cold War, and that the systematic lack of access to high-speed computers forced Soviet climatologists to use simpler climate reconstructions as analogues. The models and the way scientists interpreted them had far-reaching consequences for Soviet and later Russian climate sciences. At the same time, they shed light on Russia’s particular Russian environmental thought and human-nature relationship.

By the middle of 1970s, scientific-technical revolution (STR) became a well-established topic of research, with conferences and workshops happening all over the world. As a socialist equivalent to modernisation theory, STR was propagated by scholars and politicians alike, becoming a unique field of COMECON research. The person most commonly associated with STR success, is Czechoslovak philosopher Radovan Richta, whose Civilization at the crossroads – the social and human context of scientific-technical revolution (1966) made him (allegedly) most cited Czechoslovak scholar of the 20th century. Locally, Richta is famous – or infamous – for the role he played after 1968. While before 1968 he belonged to leading Prague Spring reformers, after the occupation he became obedient scholar of “normalisation.”

In my talk, I will concentrate on Richta’s time after 1968, a period in which he at the same time was celebrated speaker and head of the socialist delegations on several international congresses (esp. Varna, Toronto), and an author whose name was banned in Russian language publications, even those he co-authored. An author who was one of the most powerful socialist philosophers, and at the same time acted as if he was fearing for his life and career. Richta’s fate will serve me a twofold aim. First, I will analyse the strategies of socialist internationalism in social sciences in the early 1970s. Second, his strategies – with their failures and successes – will help me describe the complex relations between socialist countries and hierarchies that existed within the COMECON, and, last but not least, discuss the hierarchies that shaped the socialist scholarly communication.

To receive the full paper, please contact surman@mua.cas.cz

Revisiting the 1900-1920s in the Russophone history of science from the perspective of logical investigations, this talk will present logic as a trading zone, in which a focus on the para-disciplinary terms poznaniye and methodology is imperative for intelligibility of the wide-ranging logical research of the period. While the word “methodology” grew in Soviet rhetoric to be essentially a signpost of upholding dialectical materialism, before the Revolution, I will argue, it was a gateway to logical pluralism. Poznaniye, easily disregarded as an association with psychologism, provides conceptual continuity to developments in cybernetics in the second half of the century. The challenge of tracing selective appropriation across the violent rift of the Revolution will bring the discussion to the role of historical amnesia in the formation of a narrative in which collective knowledge-making ceases to be possible, in favor of a narrative of lone geniuses. Finally, this talk will question the responsibility of the researcher today in resisting entrapment in a cycle of historical amnesia by remembering Russophone scholars who challenged logical normativity and by tending to subjects that didn’t quite cohere, that may be archivally fragmented, but whose persistence demands the engagement of more-than-ever-necessary critical thought.

The paper tells a story of the First international topological conference in Moscow, an outstanding event that, for the first time, brought together most notable American, European, and Soviet scholars in mathematics, including those who would later play decisive roles in the mathematization of economics: John von Neumann, Leonid Kantorovich, and Albert W. Tucker. The fact that Kantorovich was in contact with von Neumann and with his closest colleagues, Solomon Lefshetz and Garrett Birkhoff, is hardly appreciated in the histories of mathematics and mathematical economics. Their brief academic exchange was interrupted by the increasing international isolation of Soviet mathematics and by the wars that ensued. The paper argues that the conference, as a singular event linking various research communities, mattered for the development of various formal frameworks and their dissemination, contributing in decisive ways to the intellectual landscape, in which the postwar mathematical economics could emerge. I suggests a more nuanced narrative linking these motivations with social and political contexts of economic modeling.

In this talk, I’ll revisit the Soviet research program on Artificial Intelligence (AI) which was institutionalized at the Academy of Sciences in the 1970s and 1980s. Complementing the standard history of this field focused on American contributions, the story of the Soviet AI also transcends its conventional labeling under the rubric of cybernetics and computer science. By looking closely at the places and practices from which this program borrowed, I’ll contextualise its goals and projects as a part of a larger technoscientific movement aimed at the rationalisation of the Soviet governance. I’ll show that despite its reliance on international circulations of ideas, the Soviet AI was built in opposition to the American conceptions of “thinking machines”. Instead, the Soviet researchers framed AI as control systems aimed at solving complex tasks which cannot be fully formalised and therefore require new modelling methods to represent the real-world situations in machines.

Why were Western elites so remarkably wrong about Russian hackers in the expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022? Despite issuing repeated warnings of a “cyber Pearl Harbor” against Kyiv, many observers mistook the role of the so-called Russian hacker. Correcting conventional off-white, nationalist, masculinist Enemy Other hacker discourse, this talk offers an alternative way of seeing, or rather not seeing, the Russian hacker. Namely, our analysis seeks to decenter the state's visual perception of the Russian hacker. Instead, drawing on resources ranging from Florensky to Merleau Ponty to Parikka, we propose an invisual imagination of state-decentered data traces and operations that follow globally networked information technologists. Under this revised approach, Russian hackers appear as multinational, not necessarily Russian-speaking, politically unaligned (if sometimes state-compromised), often antiwar, and usually invisual operators. This analysis thus corrects mistaken popular projections, does not serve the profiteering corporate state and its militaries, and refreshes an artful politics of invisual data operations.

In this talk, I provide an overview of an early stage of the academic career of Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov (before the WW2) with a focus on modalities of his positioning within Russian mathematical community and his professional contacts in Germany and France. Using Kolmogorov’s example, I draw some conclusions about the academic cooperation between the Soviet Russia and the major European countries during this period. Contrary to what one might expect, Kolmogorov’s mathematical publications in foreign journals mark the very beginning of his academic career and chronologically precede his first mathematical publication in a Russian mathematical journal. I show how the place of Russia in the international academic network of the time explains this phenomenon.

In this talk, I will look at the Soviet contributions to radio astronomy’s attempts at contact with extraterrestrial intelligence from the late 1950s until the mid-1970s. Adding to the existing standard history of American scientific efforts in the field, I emphasize the communication across the Iron Curtain throughout the Space Age. According to the common history, contact with extraterrestrial intelligence became a legitimate topic for radio astronomy in 1959 with the publication of the article ‘Searching for Interstellar Communications’ by Cornell University physicists Phillip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi in the journal Nature. By looking in parallel at the international astronautics community of the late 1950s, I will contextualize the demands of the Space Age out of which radio astronomy’s extraterrestrial intelligence emerged. I will show how the domain of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence through electromagnetic waves was prompted by the relationship in outer space between the two sides of the political divide. 

The paper discusses the transnational history of immunization against tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), It reveals that the study of TBE was tightly entangled with political and military agendas of the (long) Second World War and the Cold War and developed at the intersection of scientific internationalism and Soviet, American and British military interests. In the 1930s, an outbreak of a severe paralytic disease was recorded in the Soviet Far East. Soviet scientific missions of 1937-1939 managed to establish the viral etiology of this disease, isolate the causative virus, identify the tick as a vector and develop the first vaccine. These discoveries were a major success of Soviet virology, which brought it international recognition and stimulated global interest in tick-borne viruses. From the 1940s onwards and especially with de-stalinization TBE research became the subject of intensive scientific exchange, both within the Eastern bloc and across the Iron Curtain. Parallel to this open and civil scientific internationalism, TBE emerged as a topic of military interest on behalf of the Western allies in the context of potential Soviet weaponization, which had a profound impact on the TBE research in officially neutral Austria and led to the development of the European vaccine. 

In this talk, I will focus on the “Soviet Soybean Revolution” of the 1930s, announced by Nikolay Vavilov and widely supported organizationally through the VASKHNIL structures and financially through the Narkomzem. Despite (or rather because of) the enormous support - comparable to that of another, much more studied and also failed Khrushchev’s corn revolution - the soybean one catastrophically failed several years after its start. It was saved neither by borrowing American soybean varieties and Austrian processing technologies, nor by access to the best breeding materials from Manchuria, the Amur and Xinjiang, nor by severe protein and oil deficit in the USSR. By examining the grand plans with the routine work of obscure botanists or agronomists and ordinary farmers whose everyday lives were linked to this plant, I will contextualize the goal and practices of the Soybean revolution as part of a broader and desirable “agronomization” (introduction of a science-based approach in agriculture). In so doing, I will show that, despite the inclusion of soybean breeding in the international circulation of ideas and samples (breeding seeds from the USA arrived in the USSR in the 1930s, 1950s and 1970s), the failure of the mid-1930s shifted the focus away from this plant and stalled the development of the soy agrobiotechnology.