‘WINDOWS TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD’

‘Science and technology have acted powerfully as moderating influences, as forces pulling Russia towards the West, as factors reducing the differences between Russia and the West’

Loren R.Graham, What have we learned about Science and Technology from the Russian experience? (Richmond, 2003, p.65)

Yale Richmond in his book ‘Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Rising the Iron Curtain’ gives a record of various cultural exchanges which took place between USSR and the US during the Cold War. This book is an interesting addition to the scope of theories and speculations about the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. Namely, while many scholars argue that events of 1989 were a result of Soviet domestic polices or other ill-thought out external policies, Richmond argues that the Cold War ended because of the US-USSR cultural exchanges.

In one of the chapters devoted to the science and technology, he explains the difficult situation of the Soviet scientists who struggled with the control and other limitation imposed by the Soviet system on their research capabilities. In this time, not many of them were allowed to travel abroad to exchange their observations or to discuss technological innovations. Nevertheless, joined efforts of the Soviet and US scientists helped to change things for better and thanks to their initiatives many cultural agreements were signed between those two countries. (Richmond, 2003) However, it was only after 1972 when the exchange ‘boom’ took place. From that time, the Soviet scientist could more often travel abroad, American scientist could spend more time in the Soviet laboratories and even common projects were developed. The American government supported the scientific exchanges as it secretly hoped that they not only could help to solve problems in the filed of science but, also, could help to solve those which existed in politics. (Richmond, 2003) On the contrary, the Soviet authority mainly enjoyed the scientific exchanges because it helped the USSR to keep a track of American innovations. (Richmond, 2003) The Cold War was a battle of two clashing ideologies and it wasn’t easy for scientists to operate in such a difficult environment. On a number of occasions their relations were disturbed by the political downturns. Nevertheless, the US and Soviet scientist managed to maintain their relations in tact despite political tensions between their governments. Richmond believes that slowly but, surely, they also influenced the policies of their countries while keeping the scientific contacts alive. It is also claimed that Gorbachev was under strong influence of the international community of scientists what should not be underestimated when analyzing factors which interplayed in the run-up to the end of the Cold War. (Richmond, 2003)

This and other interesting examples can be found in this book. I would like to recommend it to everyone who is interested in the Cold War period and who would like to explore other views on how the war ended.

Sources:

Richmond Y., Cultural Exchange & The Cold War: Raising The Iron Curtain, 2003, the Pennsylvania State University