National and International Politics in US-USSR Scientific Cooperation

Abstract

The universal and culturally specific characteristics of science are difficult to delineate, since science exists simultaneously in both a national and an international context. The same is true of politics. The boundary line traditionally set between domestic and foreign politics has been eroded by the growing Interdependence of political and economic communities, and by the realization that the politician acts in both national and international arenas. Nowhere is the merging of science, foreign affairs, and domestic politics more evident than in the area of scientific cooperation between the USA and the USSR, especially in the aftermath of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and the arrest of Andrei Sakharov This paper begins with a brief overview of the inter-Academy exchange programme and the bilateral agreements of the 1970s - the dominant Institutional channels for scientific communication between American and Soviet scientists. Next, there is a discussion of the ways in which American scientists supported their Soviet colleagues against governmental repression. This is followed by an assessment of détente and human rights in relation to science. Finally, there is an analysis of 1980 Congressional and executive actions in the United States which turned the attention of the American scientific community to the protection of their professional rights on the domestic front.