From Pugwash to Putin

Gerson S Sher

Description

For 60 years, scientists from the United States and the Soviet Union participated in state-organized programs of collaboration. But what really happened in these programs? What were the hopes of the participants and governments? How did these programs weather the bumpiest years of political turbulence? And were the programs worth the millions of dollars invested in them? From Pugwash to Putin provides accounts from 63 insiders who participated in these programs, including interviews with scientists, program managers, and current or former government officials. In their own words, these participants discuss how and why they engaged in cooperative science, what their initial expectations were, and what lessons they learned. They tell stories of gravitational waves, classified chalkboards, phantom scientists, AIDS propaganda, and gunfire at meteorological stations, illustrating the tensions and benefits of this collaborative work. From the first scientific exchanges of the Cold War years through the years following the fall of the Soviet Union, Gerson S. Sher provides a sweeping and critical history of what happens when science is used as a foreign policy tool. Sher, a former manager of these cooperative programs, provides a detailed and critical assessment of what worked, what didn't, and why it matters.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: The Timeline

1. The Deep Cold War and the Exchange Program

2. Détente and the Heyday of Massive Agreements

3. Sanctions and Perestroika

4. After the Fall: New Times, New Approaches

Part II: In Their Own Words

5. How Did It Start?

6. What Kept Them Going?

7. Scientific Accomplishments

8. Other Accomplishments

9. Problems

10. On the Nature of Sciences in the Former Soviet Union

11. Vignettes

Part III: Conclusion: So What?

12. What to Make of It All?

Appendix: List of Interviews

References

Sujets

• HISTORY
• U.S.
• Modern history
• Cold War
• 20th century
• Soviet Union
• Russia
• History of science
• History of the Americas
• History of Europe
• United States
• États-Unis
• Guerre froide
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• Science
• Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques
• Russie

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 17 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253042651
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

FROM PUGWASH TO PUTIN
FROM PUGWASH TO PUTIN
A Critical History of US-Soviet Scientific Cooperation
Gerson S. Sher
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2019 by Gerson S. Sher
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
978-0-253-04261-3 (cloth)
978-0-253-04262-0 (paperback)
978-0-253-04263-7 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19
For Sasha

Translation
[Heading]
President of the Russian Federation
Telegram
[Date]
Dear Aleksandr Mikhailovich - I congratulate you on your 70 th birthday. For many long years, your work at the Troitsk Institute have resulted in an entire series of fundamental scientific research, discoveries, and innovations, leaving a perceptible legacy in our land s physics. Also extremely important is your participation in projects on promoting the reliability of burial of radioactive materials and your leadership of an international program on creation of modern scientific research institutes on the basis of the country s universities. I wish you, Aleksandr Mikhailovich, good health, happiness, and well-being .
V. Putin .
This publication is based on work supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I The Timeline
1 The Deep Cold War and the Exchange Programs
2 D tente and the Heyday of Massive Agreements
3 Sanctions and Perestroika
4 After the Fall: New Times, New Approaches
Part II In Their Own Words
5 How Did It Start?
6 What Kept Them Going?
7 Scientific Accomplishments
8 Other Accomplishments
9 Problems
10 On the Nature of Science in the Former Soviet Union
11 Vignettes
Part III Conclusion: So What?
12 What to Make of It All?
Appendix: List of Interviews
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I AM NOT A SCIENTIST, CERTAINLY NOT TRAINED in the natural sciences, though some would oxymoronically call the discipline in which I earned my degree political science. My work has been the science education that I never had, and I ve sought to take advantage of it. I thank countless scientists with whom I have been most fortunate to work-members of the National Academy of Sciences, the professional staff of the National Science Foundation, scientists throughout the Soviet Union and its successor states who have tolerated my visits in their laboratories and my questions, and American scientists and scientists of other nations who have in so many ways contributed to the management and oversight of the programs in which I ve been involved.
In this regard, I wish to thank one very distinguished scientist in particular, though regrettably posthumously, Academician Aleksandr Mikhailovich Dykhne. Sasha, as he was known, was a giant among men and women of science. 1 In addition, his impeccable character was such that he was revered by all who knew him. This was demonstrated for me when our Russian colleagues insisted that only he could bring order to a potentially unruly binational expert panel for one of our hotly contested competitions. Beyond this, he was an exceptionally warm, modest, and caring person who, however, suffered no fools. I dedicate this book to his memory. One of the few regrets of my career is that I failed to convey a proper understanding to Sasha of the holy American sport of baseball, for which I take full responsibility-as well as for any errors of fact and interpretation that may appear throughout this book.
Professor Loren R. Graham, professor emeritus of the history of science in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, has been an inspiration, mentor, colleague, and friend for many years and has encouraged me and egged me on to write this book. Loren s 1972 book, Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union , 2 played a major role in my intellectual development when I was studying the Yugoslav Praxis group of Marxist philosophers for my dissertation under another great thinker, the late political historian Robert C. Tucker, my primary dissertation advisor, and the indomitable Stephen F. Cohen, my second advisor. 3 Once I decided to make a profession of managing cooperative science programs, Loren s path and mine intersected frequently, most notably in our collaboration on the Basic Research and Higher Education program at CRDF (US Civilian Research and Development Foundation for the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union; now CRDF Global). It has always been a thrill to work as a peer, if that is the right term, with such a thoroughly distinguished scholar and to be able to bat around with him thoughts about Russia, science, and life. All the while, he also encouraged me strongly to pursue my scholarly interests. In the United States, we do not have schools of scientists or scholars in the Russian and German traditions, but if we did, there would be a Graham School of science history worthy of similar recognition.
The extensive number of interviews I carried out was possible only due to the generosity of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, through a special travel and learning grant that was administered by CRDF Global. The MacArthur Foundation has been a key private supporter of scientific and scholarly cooperation with Russia, willing to undertake ambitious strategic initiatives-in particular, in research and education-that have borne fruit in many ways. While any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, I wish to acknowledge here not only my personal gratitude but also my admiration for its visionary engagement in this broad field.
In addition, there are two friends without whom I would have been unable to coordinate my interviews in Georgia and Ukraine and who assisted me with follow-up correspondence: Viktor Los of the Institute of Magnetism of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, whom I met many years before when he served as science attach at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, DC, and Helen Giorgadze of the Georgian Research and Development Foundation, which was created by CRDF Global and became a model for competitive grant making in that beautiful country. I am deeply grateful to them for their invaluable help.
I could not have written this book without the indulgence of the sixty-two remarkable people who allowed me to interview them. Their names are listed in the appendix. They were uniformly gracious, candid, and eager to share their experience in the hope that it might be of broader benefit. While the interviews themselves were generally no longer than an hour, the participants spent a great deal of additional time in both preparing for the discussion and in reviewing the sometimes voluminous excerpts that I sent them for approval. Their words, much more than mine, are what make this study unique, insightful, authentic, and at times even fun. Their testimony creates an important historical record of a massive, historic undertaking. I hope that they find this book to be an adequate vehicle for others to understand and reflect on their rich experience and assessments. Some of the quoted passages from the interviews are lengthy, but I have left as much text as possible intact because of the richness of personal detail that gives the speakers words special meaning.
I am also grateful to those who have made comments or suggestions on portions of my manuscript: Murray Feshbach, Loren Graham, Eric Green, Maija Kukla, John Malin, Norman Neureiter, the late Arthur E. Pardee Jr., Peter Reddaway, and Valery Soyfer. My acquisitions editor at Indiana University Press, Jennika Baines, is responsible for urging me to put the text into readable form.
Words do not suffice to express my deepest debt of gratitude, to my family. More than any person on earth, my wife, Margery Leveen Sher, the love of my life, has been my best guide, critic, editor, and friend in all things. About life, I have learned some of my most valuable lessons from my children, Rabbi Jeremy D. Sher and Adam Leveen Sher, who have taught me by their deeds to cherish the unexpected in ourselves and in others. The list of other friends and colleagues from whose counsel I have benefited is simply far too long to enumerate, but you know who you are.
All that having been said, I take full responsibility for any mistakes, misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and the like that may appear in this work.
Notes
1 . See the impressive appreciation by his many distinguished colleagues in Alfimov, et al. 2005.
2 . Graham 1972.
3 . The