International Transfer in Soviet Science in the 1950s–1960s (the Case of the L.Ya. Karpov NIFHI)

Abstract

The authors of this article offer their version of the answer to the question of how international scientific cooperation developed during the early stages of the scientific and technological revolution during the Cold War. The authors validate their hypothesis about the existence of a specific Soviet model of scientific transfer. The novelty of the work lies in the introduction into academic discourse of unpublished documents of the L.Y. Karpov Research Institute of Physical Chemistry, deposited at the RGA in Samara, based on the concept of scientific transfer emerging in modern historiography. The paper identifies four groups of actors of international scientific transfer, of which research institutes were the most active. The forms of scientific communications in the field of chemistry in the 1950s and 1960s emerged at international symposiums, conferences, internships, research trips, training in Soviet universities of graduate students and young scientists. These channels of interaction were sufficiently formalised and required careful preliminary preparation of documents approved at the state level. Informal communication channels (personal meetings, exchange of scientific literature), for the most part, were formed with scientists from socialist countries. Joint research projects were also built on this basis. Agreements on scientific and technical cooperation with socialist countries were an institutional reinforcement of such work. In general, the research carried out at the L.Ya. Karpov Research Institute of Physical Chemistry was deeply integrated into the trends of the scientific and technological revolution of the midtwentieth century.