Scientific Communication Across the Iron Curtain

123 Pages·2016·1.3 MB·English

by  Christopher D. Hollings

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN HISTORY OF SCIENCE
AND TECHNOLOGY
Christopher D. Hollings
Scientific
Communication
Across the Iron
Curtain
123
SpringerBriefs in History of Science
and Technology
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10085
Christopher D. Hollings
fi
Scienti c Communication
Across the Iron Curtain
123
Christopher D.Hollings
Mathematical Institute
University of Oxford
Oxford
UK
ISSN 2211-4564 ISSN 2211-4572 (electronic)
SpringerBriefs inHistory ofScience andTechnology
ISBN978-3-319-25344-2 ISBN978-3-319-25346-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25346-6
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Dedicated to the memory of Jackie Stedall

Abstract
Drawingevidencefromarangeofdisciplines,Istudytheextenttowhichscientists
were able to communicate with their counterparts on the opposite side of what
became the Iron Curtain. I consider the scope that existed for personal communi-
cation between scientists, as well as for the attendance offoreign conferences, and
describe how these changed over the decades. Access to publications is also dealt
with:Iaddressseparatelythequestionsofphysicalaccess,andoflinguisticaccess.
In particular, I argue that physical accessibility was generally good in both direc-
tions,butthatWesternscientistswereafflictedbygreaterlinguisticdifficultiesthan
their Soviet counterparts, whose major problems in accessing Western research
were bureaucratic in nature.
(cid:1) (cid:1)
Keywords Scientific communication Cold War science Academic exchange
vii

Preface
The various bureaucratic, logistical, and linguistic problems that afflicted contacts
across the Iron Curtain are well-recognised by historians, and have been subjected
to a number of general studies.1 In the specifically scientific context, however, the
vast majority of available investigations appear to focus upon those aspects of a
particular discipline that emerged during the years of the Cold War, with com-
municationsdifficultiesoftenbeingasecondarymatter.Thepurposeofthepresent
book therefore is to provide an overview of the problems of Cold War scientific
communications (principally in the academic context) in which these selfsame
difficultiesarethemainfocus.Theaccountgivenhereintegrates(forthefirsttime,
to the best of my knowledge) the political/ideological/bureaucratic problems that
afflicted East-West contacts with those of a linguistic nature. Indeed, my main
theses lie at the intersection of these issues. They are, first of all, that, where
conferenceattendanceandpersonalcorrespondencewereconcerned,thedifficulties
encountered were broadly similar across the sciences, but that we begin to see a
markeddifferencebetweendistinctdisciplineswhenweconsidertheavailabilityof
publications and the provision of translations. Second, I contend that the physical
accessibilityofpublicationsfrom‘theotherside’wasgenerallymuchbetterthanis
commonly supposed. Finally, I argue that Western scientists were afflicted by
greater linguistic difficulties than their Soviet counterparts, who do not appear to
havebeenoverlyaffectedbythelanguagebarrier—instead,theirmajorproblemsin
accessing Western research were bureaucratic in nature.
The material of this book is arranged as follows. I begin in Chap.1 by estab-
lishing a rough framework for the study of scientific communication, and also set
uptheconventionsandterminologytobeadoptedthroughout.InChap.2,Iturnto
a general discussion of communications between scientists in East and West from
the 1920s, up to around the 1980s; the focus in Chap. 2 is upon personal contacts
between scientists, by which I mean correspondence and face-to-face meetings,
usually at conferences. The scene is set in Sect. 2.1 by a short discussion of
1IsavedetailedreferencesfortheIntroduction.
ix