From Pugwash to Putin: A Critical History of US-Soviet Scientific Cooperation. By Gerson S. Sher (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2019) 306 pages, $32.94

Abstract

This is a curious book—part oral history of scientists engaged in international scientific cooperation, part commentary on the differences between Soviet-style science and U.S. scientific research, part history and analysis of U.S./USSR scientific cooperation, and part observation of the impact of scientific cooperation on foreign affairs after the fall of the Soviet Union. Sher, who was engaged for many years in the management of exchange programs between the United States and the Soviet Union and later Russia, speaks with knowledge and experience of the many programs begun in the dying days of the Soviet Union and continued thereafter. In particular, he chronicles the efforts to save what was left of the Russian scientific establishment after 1991 and restore it to some semblance of its previous status.Sher is a good writer; many of his examples and vignettes are engaging and informative. But he is neither a historian nor a scientist, though he is knowledgeable about the methods of both history and science. Much of the book is devoted to a history, as he experienced it, of the science agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union shortly before 1991, and then a detailed history of the relations after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Because of his focus on the fall of the Soviet Union and its aftermath, he has little to say about the years immediately after World War II, a period with its own revealing lessons of scientific cooperation with the Soviet Union. The centerpiece of the book, however, is an annotated history of experience in the programs of cooperation with the “new” Russia, presented in the words of the participants along with commentary interpolated by Sher. Problems, successes, scientific accomplishments, foreign-policy effects, human impacts, and bureaucratic difficulties are described, usually in the words of those engaged in the programs, occasionally by foreign-policy officials.The book does not fit into any specific realm of analysis—neither the history of science, international affairs, nor bureaucratic politics. Rather, it is a personal memoir analyzing Sher’s experiences in a little-studied area of international scientific cooperation. There have been other more typical disciplinary analyses of international scientific cooperation from the perspective of international affairs, as well as of the Russian state's influence on international policy after the Soviet Union's demise, the relevance of scientific cooperation to strategic issues, or even the relationship of research to scientific advance. Sher offers suggestions about how international cooperation affects these areas and makes several points about their relevance to foreign policy, though they tend to be anecdotal and sometimes based on personal reflections about prominent officials (Henry Kissinger takes his lumps) or about the Department of State in general. The occasional digressions of that kind, even when deserved, do not point to an underlying disciplinary analysis.Notwithstanding the personal nature of the history presented, the material does make contributions to specific disciplinary areas. Many of the comments about the differences between the structure and assumptions of the Russian/Soviet style of scientific research and that of the West, particularly the United States, are instructive and useful inputs to the history of science. The interesting and intriguing views that Sher is able to obtain from significant actors in cooperative programs often help to illustrate many of the problems and successes encountered in the cooperative research programs. They provide useful cautions about issues that can arise in cooperative efforts across nations and cultures. This book is largely a personal memoir, interesting but not a discipline-based or interdisciplinary analysis.