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SUMMARY:The thaw in the Pole: Cold War science and showcasing at the Siber
 ian science-city and Antarctic expeditions (1955–1964) - Ksenia Tatarche
 nko (University of Geneva)
DTSTART:20181220T130000Z
DTEND:20181220T140000Z
UID:TALK111199@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Richard Staley
DESCRIPTION:This paper focuses on the interdependencies in the process of 
 making international science and producing knowledge about extreme environ
 ments by establishing connections and comparisons between two historical e
 pisodes: the creation of the Siberian science-city and the early Soviet An
 tarctic expeditions. It reveals how the Cold War framework highlighted a k
 ey ambiguity of Soviet science: producing universal knowledge in socialist
  way. Thanks to recent works on Cold War sciences\, we now know that circu
 lating people\, ideas and artefacts operationalized\, breached\, and occas
 ionally transcended geopolitical divisions. Scholars working on polar regi
 ons also demonstrate how these regions are constructed both as strategic l
 ocations and rhetorical forms of domination over nature. This paper adds a
 nother dimension to a discussion of such entanglements among several histo
 rical sub-disciplines – Big Science as spectacle. It argues that showcas
 ing was a constitutive element\, not an accidental byproduct\, of Khrushch
 ev-era massive investment into ostensibly civilian scientific infrastructu
 res across Siberia and Antarctica. In 1957\, the year of Sputnik\, the Sov
 iet press announced the creation of the first Siberian science-city\, Akad
 emgorodok\, and the images of 'Ob'\, the flagman of the Soviet expedition 
 sailing south for the third time\, proliferated. The aim here is not only 
 to correct misleading historiographic claims conflating remoteness with 'f
 reedom' and de-Stalinization with de-Sovietization\, but to explain the ve
 ry size of historical record associated with these projects. Situated acro
 ss the globe\, Siberian science-cities and Antarctic bases were presented 
 in an unexpectedly similar way\, as model scientific communities. In the p
 rocess\, both regions and their natural environments became not only the e
 lements of scientific representations as circulating 'mobiles'\, but the s
 tages for enacting the competing versions of modernity. Both locales entic
 ed numerous visitors to record and share their experiences. Yet such visit
 ors often passed over a key aspect of these sites – the co-dependency be
 tween the openness of international science and the secrecy regimes of nat
 ional defence. Akademgorodok had many ties to 'plutopias'\, the closed cit
 ies of the Soviet nuclear programme\, and Antarctica's international 'scie
 nce and peace' to the Arctic's Cold War frontier.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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