In my talk, I explore the representation of cybernetic and industrial machines in Soviet popular culture. The Western science fiction often frames the human-machine relation in terms of “the ontology of the enemy” (Peter Galison): suffice it to mention such canonical examples of AI takeover as HAL 900 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the eponymous cybernetic assassin in The Terminator, replicants in Blade Runner, or the all-engulfing virtual reality of The Matrix. In contrast, the Soviets didn’t see technology as an existential threat but rather as an ethical Other which nudges humans in the ethical quest for self-exploration and self-perfection: be it alien technological artifacts in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, cybernetic boy in The Adventures of the Elektronic, industrial machines in the works of Dziga Vertov and Andrei Platonov, or the pantechnological utopia of the Gordin brothers. Fundamentally, I argue, these differences reveal the peculiarities of the Soviet cultural episteme of technology.

This talk will explore nuclear cultural heritage-making as a spatial activity in the context of nuclear secrecy and restricted access. It focuses on the closed city Sarov, formerly Arzamas-16, the birthplace of Soviet nuclear weapons. Since the end of the Cold War, Sarov has cultivated its image as a heritage site, opening a museum of nuclear weapons, pioneering nuclear scientists and local history, as well as reconstructing religious sites. Based on interviews and fieldwork in Russia, this article maps the hitherto unstudied development of cultural heritage infrastructure in a closed city and its diverse and conflicting political uses and assesses the ambivalence of nuclear material culture as it is selectively preserved and deployed to achieve these conflicting goals.

This talk explores the spread of Soviet influence in Polish academia during the early Cold War period. Its focuses on the activities of the young social scientists who, under the instruction of the philosopher Adam Schaff, became the main driving force of the ‘re-education’ of Polish scholars and scientists in accordance with the Soviet standards. Exploring the ideological campaigns organised by the young Marxist scholars, this talk will argue that these campaigns did not reach their goals; the public resistance of established professors towards the new academic and political virtues evidenced that the desired changes in the ‘moral economy’ of Polish science could not be achieved using the methods that the activists of Stalinisation had at their disposal. Most importantly, during the crisis of the socialist block in 1956, the young activists of ‘Stalinisation’ became the most active fighters against Stalinism. Based on this, the author will discuss more general issues related to the spread of Soviet influences in Central and Eastern Europe after the Second World War.

The concept of 'noosphere' introduced roughly a century ago by Ukrainian and Soviet scientist Vladimir Vernadsky is now receiving more attention in the context of discussions about the Anthropocene Epoch. In Russia though, 'noosphere' has never gone out of fashion. What allowed this concept to stay applicable and convenient for alternating political regimes and modes of thinking? And how 'noosphere' is of use to the current Russian ruling class in their attempt to forge 'sovereign environmental policy'? This article explores how the notion of 'noosphere' has transformed and changed its meaning in the official Russian environmental discourses through the last century. Closely tied with a project of reform of the national system of organized science at first, the concept then emerged at the frontier of the environmental turn in the 1980s along with the novel sustainability framework before turning into an example of early geopolitical insight connecting the matters of climate and green transition to national security under Putin.

As Russian elites intensified their engagement with Western learning in the early eighteenth century, they encountered new cosmogonies—particularly Thomas Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth (1681)—that emphasized a dynamic model of the earth’s history in contradistinction to static Orthodox patristic or Jesuit-influenced Aristotelian cosmogonies, the reigning models in pre-Petrine Russia.  This chapter, part of my manuscript-in-progress “Tsardom of Rock: The Earth and its Meanings in Imperial Russia,” examines three Russian theories of earth—Feofan Prokopovich’s and Vasilii Tatishchev’s of 1729, Mikhail Lomonosov’s of 1763, and Peters Simon Pallas’s of 1778—that engage with Burnet’s and other European models to explain one of the great puzzles of early modern natural history: the fossils and remains of so many seemingly tropical organisms (mammoths, “Indian” grasses, sea lilies) unearthed in large quantities by laborers in frigid Siberia’s burgeoning mining industry.  Three of these four thinkers developed theories of earth that centered around a dramatic change in the Russian Empire’s past landscape and climate, that Siberia was once warm.  The fourth, P.S. Pallas, finds no change in climate but argues that Siberia and the Russian steppe had been inundated by tropical waters. This chapter examines the philosophical and religious stakes of a tropical Siberia, as well as these works’ contributions to Russia’s imperial project and to a vision of Russia’s special place in geological time.  

This talk introduces nuclear emergency response as a set of strategies designed to respond to nuclear risks (technical, environmental, and social), and to craft expectations of manageable crises. I discuss this “paradox of preparedness” in the context of post-Fukushima efforts to take stock of, and somewhat harmonize, nuclear emergency response efforts across the globe. Focusing on the Russian initiative in particular, I activate the idiom of co-production to speculate on how this specific organizational structure frames risks, creates expectations, and summons resources that may ultimately encourage an over-confidence in the state’s crisis management capabilities, in the nuclear sector and beyond.

Soviet science contributed significantly to our understanding of anthropogenic climate change and, as part of this, played a central role in the emerging science underpinning climate modification and geoengineering initiatives. This talk traces the development of Soviet thinking in this area. During the early 1970s, a key focus of discussion was the use of stratospheric aerosols linked to the innovative ideas of Mikhail Budyko and colleagues. Their work had its origins in what has been termed the theory of aerosol climatic catastrophe and gained traction in the late Soviet period. Post-1991, the ideas of Budyko were advanced by Yuri Izrael and his collaborators and engendered a wider debate concerning the efficacy of geoengineering solutions amongst Russia's climate scientists. The legacies of this scientific discussion are also evident in recent high-level international debates such as those linked to the activities of the IPCC. This talk is based on a collaborative paper by the author and Marianna Poberezhskaya.

This talk analyses the contested internationalism in Soviet polar science between 1926 and 1937. Studying the policy of isolationism and the attempts by some Soviet scientists to oppose it is very timely now when disruption of scientific cooperation is fully manifested, and the North / the Arctic constructed since the end of the 1980s as a space for international science has become ‘fractured’ again. The talk begins with a discussion of the controversy around the possibilities of joint research with German oceanographers in the Barents Sea when the first signs of isolationism were articulated not by authorities but by scientists themselves. Then I look at the international campaign for Umberto Nobile's 1928 rescue expedition from which the fame of the Soviet strength in Arctic exploration originated. I also discuss the organization of the Second International Polar Year of 1932–34 and the restricted internationalism of the mid-1930s when some foreign scientists could still visit the Soviet Union, and some carefully selected Soviet scientists could go abroad. The final part of the talk is devoted to the critical year of 1937 when the celebrations of the First North Pole ice floor expedition were accompanied by repressive measures against leading Soviet polar explorers. In my research, I consider internationalism and isolationism not as ideologies but as practices of doing science, when scientists, on the one hand, chose their strategies of being ‘cosmopolitan’ vs ‘local’ depending on their habitus, career trajectories, and fields of studies but, on the other hand, adapting to or opposing the political pressure.

To date, the phenomenon of young offenders and juvenile delinquents in imperial Russia and the USSR has been studied principally from the perspectives of the history of childhood and the history of social welfare. Andy will reexamine this topic from the perspective of the history of knowledge. He will look at the dynamic interplay of a range of human sciences and associated forms of professional knowledge in the context of the evolution of systems of juvenile justice and correction between the 1860s’ modernising reforms of tsar Alexander II and the Stalinisation of the Soviet state and society during the 1930s. Crucial to the project is an integrated epistemic analysis of academic, judicial, penitentiary, medical, and pedagogical sources, as well as the conceptualisation of the network of relevant institutions, from penitentiary congresses and juvenile courts to assessment clinics and reformatories, as mutually interconnected ‘spaces of knowledge’ (‘lieux de savoir’ in the terms of the French historian of knowledge Christian Jacob) – sites in which relevant knowledge, empirical and theoretical, experiential and technical, was generated, shaping juvenile social transgressions and deviance as a distinctive object of both knowledge and power. Andy will present his work in progress on a new book project with the working title ‘Spaces of Knowledge: Juvenile Criminology and Penology in the Late Russian Empire and Early Soviet Union (1860s-1930s)’.

This talk explores exchange, interactions and interventions among socialist countries in the fields of medicine and health, to consider the role and influence of the Soviet Union in the geopolitical landscape.  In the talk, I take as a starting point the exit of Eastern European countries from the WHO shortly after the organisation was established. For nearly a decade, nations in the region pursued the establishment of alternative solutions, with the first test to this new socialist international health being a concerted effort of providing medical aid to the North in the Korean War, followed by more formally established collaborations, such as the socialist health ministers’ annual meetings and bilateral agreements on medical training, technical assistance and solidarity projects. Through examples of socialist medical internationalism, I interrogate the extent of Soviet influence in interventions and networks, and ask how we can understand socialist scientific and medical internationalism if we take seemingly peripheral areas as starting points. Furthermore, this research also invites conversations on ideas of “sovietization” in Eastern Europe and beyond. History of medicine and public health, especially work that involves the creation of public health systems in Eastern Europe, point to the multifaceted ways in which countries conceived of, negotiated and resisted Soviet “blueprints”.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, effective handling of scientific information was identified as crucial for advancement and international competitiveness. The Soviet Union, through the founding of The All-Union Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI), developed its own grandiose system which served researchers and engineers throughout the USSR. With emphasis on the first 25 years of VINITI (1952–1977), this presentation consider the ideas behind this grand initiative for acquiring and processing international literature, and discuss the central ideas in its organisation such as “enrichment”, “concentration”, “abstracting” and “preprinting”, and how it relates to similar grand visions of how to organise knowledge. Overall, the activities of VINITI can today appear as both old-fashioned, bordering on the utopian, and as visionary and modern in its abandonment of journals and traditional forms of peer review.

In the mid-1950s, two international organizations emerged with the aim of peaceful research in nuclear and particle physics: CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and, later, JINR in Dubna, the USSR. During more than half a century of their history, several generations of scientists passed through them, and these institutions established and developed a large research infrastructure, made discoveries, and underwent significant political transformations. However, despite the historical and functional similarities, these organizations do not seem to be real twins. More precisely, on the part of JINR, especially during the decline of the 1990s, the commonality with CERN was constantly emphasized, sometimes mixed with admiration. CERN, on the contrary, focuses on its own successes and only occasionally recognizes JINR's identical status and similar experiences. This talk will review key events in the history of CERN and JINR, their competition and cooperation, and attempt a comparison of these two institutions.

The book is devoted to the history of the First All-Russian (All-Union) Agricultural and Craft-Industrial Exhibition with a Foreign Section, which took place in Moscow in 1923 and became the prototype of the All-Russian Exhibition of Economic Achievements (VDNKh).

Elina focuses on the scientific-educational and technical-technological components of the exhibition. Using a wide range of sources, she studies various subjects of the show - the tasks set by its organizers; the role of scientists as experts and exhibitors of the exhibition; the purpose, content and appearance of the expositions themselves; “workdays” and holidays of the exhibition. At the same time, the exhibition is presented as an instrument of “scientific diplomacy”, an as an agitation and propaganda campaign aimed at the peasantry.

This talk explores the meaning, history and production context of popular science films in the Soviet Union, focusing, in particular, on the 1970s and 80s, when some of the most experimental works were created within that framework. In the absence of an experimental filmmaking scene, such as that booming in the West, the genre of science film frequently provided Soviet filmmakers with a convenient framework for formal experiments with image and sound, particularly in those films that explained the more abstract theoretical concepts in physics or geometry. Taking precise knowledge and scientific facts as a point of departure, some of these films turned into philosophical parables, absurdist comments on the everyday clichés, or pure exercises in rhythm and graphics. All of these films were nevertheless officially approved for use in educational institutions.

This book aims to shed new light on the puzzle of the late Soviet conversion to the “market” and capitalism by revisiting the history of Soviet reform economics. Using a variety of sources, including interviews with economists, archival files, and published materials, it examines the social contexts in which economists employed in economic administration and research institutions could have played a crucial public and political role, the forms of their participation, and the social and political logic behind the selection of economic experts and their rise to power during perestroika and the “transition” period. It also compares the professional trajectories of these reformist economists and assesses the scope of this group’s influence in the post-Soviet period in order to conclude on the new state of economic expertise in Russia.

At first glance, the Novosibirsk Scientific Center, or Akademgorodok, appears as an outlier in academic excellence. This 'science city' is renowned for a preeminent university, dozens of research institutes, and a thriving technopark. At home, it is an emblem of Russian innovation; abroad, it is often portrayed as a potential threat, a breeding ground of cyber soldiers. Though Siberia has been the main source of post-1991 Russian carbon revenues, its soviet history and cold war legacy of internationalism demonstrates that territorial and scientific dimensions interlocked the moment the Siberian Branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences was created in 1957.

Drawing on a wide range of previously unexplored archives, Soviet SCI_BERIA focuses on how the post-Stalinist Siberia was redefined and represented through the ideal of rational development, the late socialist innovation practices, and the relationship between experts and the state. It offers a fresh insight into the transition from Soviet to post-Soviet Akademgorodok. In doing so, Tatarchenko not only fosters a conversation between history, area studies, and science studies but also sheds new light on Soviet modernity and the limits of its transformative projects.

The School of Mathematical and Navigational Sciences was one of the first technical educational institutions in Russia, established by the tsar's decree in 1701 with boyar Fyodor Alekseevich Golovin as its head. Mathematics was taught by the Scotsman Henry Farhvarson, and navigational sciences by Englishmen Stephen Gwyn and Richard Grace, hired by Peter the Great during the Great Embassy. The history of the school has attracted the attention of Russian historians since the 18th century and is well-studied. However, the collection of manuscript books of Nikolai Pavlovich Durov (1834-1879), a professor at the Institute of the Corps of Railway Engineers, now kept at the Russian State Library, contains previously unstudied records from 1701-1705. Those records throw light on several issues related to the early history of the School: the social composition of the first student cohort, the everyday difficulties faced by the administrators and students, and the ways they coped with those problems.

In 1958, the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) convened for the third time after World War II, this time in Edinburgh. Among the Soviet mathematicians who delivered talks at the ICM was Lev Pontryagin (1908–1988), already renowned for his work in the field of topology. In his hour-long plenary address, he chose to discuss his recent work on the mathematical theory of optimal processes, which he had carried out jointly with three of his former students. My presentation will explore three questions about Pontryagin’s talk at the ICM. First, what was Pontryagin able to communicate about his work outside the Soviet Union? Second, what did he leave aside with regards to the scientific and technical context in which his work had been carried out? And third, how should we treat the opinion of one of Pontryagin’s collaborators, according to whom “Pontryagin did not like to indicate scientific sources outside his group […], as if we worked in a vacuum without any connection to world science”?