Before and After the Fall: Geography of Soviet and Post-Soviet Physics Surveyed via Leading Journals

Abstract

Using a dataset of corresponding addresses in the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics (JETP) and JETP Letters (JETPL), which were the leading venues for Soviet physics, we perform a large-scale survey of the spatial geography of Soviet and post-Soviet physics during the period 1975–2015, capturing the changing roles of different republics and cities within the USSR, post-Soviet states, and countries that were never part of the Soviet Union. We also pay attention to the role of Russian-speaking emigrants. Such a detailed and data-driven geography, based on two leading cross-physics publications, serves as a novel addition to the fields of the history of physics and Soviet/post-Soviet science and geopolitics.