A Common Language of the Earth: American-Soviet Scientific Collaborations during the Cold War

Abstract

Historians have characterized Cold War American-Soviet scientific projects as venues for top-down ideological warfare and as scientifically inefficient collaborations stunted by strict official control. This dissertation rewrites this history from the bottom up. It traces the development of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. scientific dialogue from limited and regimented inter-academy exchanges in the 1950s to highly productive collaborations between American and Soviet earth scientists in the 1970s and 1980s. Novel Russian and American sources reveal that the explanation for productivity of these bilateral projects lies with energy and commitment of participants, mostly mid-level professionals, as they overcame ideological and cultural barriers.As earth sciences came to the forefront of research in the post-WWII world, a vibrant channel of communication opened between American and Soviet climatologists, geologists, and geophysicists. A professional, cultural, and personal experience for participants, collaboration in working groups became their way of developing joint expertise. Climate change, earthquake prediction, environmental hazards, and nuclear test verification took mid-level scientists to the field, lab, and symposia in both countries. The knowledge they shared and created contributed to scientific understanding of environmental issues and policy changes of the late twentieth century and their cultural rapprochement to bridging the Cold War gap between the American and Soviet (and post-Soviet) scientific communities.