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Dimensions transnationales : interdépendances et impératifs d’une présence sur la scène mondiale

Quantum Tunneling through the Iron Curtain

The Soviet nuclear city of Dubna as a Cold War crossing point
Effet tunnel au travers du rideau de fer : la ville nucléaire de Dubna, point de passage pendant la guerre froide
Roman Khandozhko
p. 369-396

Abstracts

In this article, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, USSR, is considered as one of the institutional hubs in the complex mosaic of the “Global Cold War”. The paper discusses how the bureaucratic machinery of Soviet science and the authoritarian Soviet state in general, with its omnipresent state security apparatus and party control, responded to the challenges of scientific globalization in the field of high energy physics by creating an “international oasis” on its own territory. The author argues that establishing the research centre in Dubna helped the Soviet Union implement the policy of “nuclear imperialism” in the Eastern Bloc and facilitate access to the latest achievements of Western science and technology. At the same time, from the 1950s to the 1980s the Dubna institute functioned as an interaction zone in which stable informal relations between scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain led to cultural and ideological interpenetration.

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  • 1 On the re‑interpreting of big science research in terms of networks see Catherine Westfall, “Rethin (...)
  • 2 See for example Lillian Hoddeson, “Establishing KEK in Japan and Fermilab in the U.S. International (...)
  • 3 Armin Hermann, Lanfranco Belloni, John Krige and Laura Weiss, History of CERN. vol. I (Amsterdam – (...)

1In the post‑World War II period, the Soviet Union became involved in the implementation of “big science” projects, the effectiveness and success of which depended directly on the continuous transfer of knowledge, technologies and materials within various local, national and transnational networks.1 One such project was high‑energy physics, the development of which in the second half of the twentieth century was built around experiments using high‑precision and expensive equipment – particle accelerators.2 The magnitude of technological tasks, along with political reasons, meant that in post‑war Western Europe, accelerator physics developed mostly as a transnational project. From 1950–54, resources were pooled in the creation of the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN), which soon grew into one of the world’s largest particle physics research centers.3 The response from the other side of the Iron Curtain was not long in coming – two years later in the small city of Dubna on the bank of the River Volga, about 120 km north of Moscow, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) was created by the countries of the socialist bloc under the leadership of the USSR. For more than 30 years, this one‑of‑a‑kind international research centre in the Soviet province saw not only specialists from Eastern Europe and socialist Asia but also their Western colleagues working side by side with Soviet scientists.

  • 4 Sari Autio‑Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy, “Introduction : The Cold War from a New Perspective,” in S (...)
  • 5 György Péteri, “Nylon Curtain. Transnational and Transsystemic Tendencies in the Cultural Life of S (...)
  • 6 David Baneke, “The Absence of the East : International Influences on Science Policy in Western Euro (...)

2Over the past decade and a half, historians have been actively rethinking the bipolar picture of the Cold War with its superpower approach and focusing on large political narratives – and have turned to the analysis of inter‑bloc networks and institutions, microcontacts and minor actors, introducing a new paradigm of the Cold War as “multileveled‑multipolar interaction.”4 An important element in the new approach is the reinterpretation of the idea of the impermeability of the “Iron Curtain,” which in fact allowed for a variety of options for cross‑border interplay.5 In this “New Cold War History,” great emphasis is placed on the sphere of scientific contacts, which in the 1950–80s took on the role of “a politics‑free, neutral zone, both for diplomatic purposes and for economic and technological competition in isolation from political sensitivities.”6 Although science served as an engine of the arms race and as an important tool for the ideological confrontation between the two systems, the permeability of the Iron Curtain was especially visible in this zone. Formal collaborative agreements and informal contacts between scientists, espionage and open circulation of scientific data, technology transfer, scientific exchange and multinational research projects all constitute extensive material for the transnational history of the Cold War.

  • 7 Marc Elie, “Formulating the Global Environment : Soviet Soil Scientists and the International Deser (...)
  • 8 Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, The Power of Systems : How Policy Sciences Opened up the Cold War World (Ithaca (...)
  • 9 John Krige, “Atoms for Peace : Scientific Internationalism and Scientific Intelligence,” Osiris, 21 (...)
  • 10 The most notable of these initiatives became the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. (...)

3Although the establishment of inter‑bloc scientific cooperation as an element of international politics in the Cold War was relevant for a wide range of disciplines from soil science7 to system analysis,8 the earliest, most exemplary version of this development was demonstrated by atomic physics. After the national atomic weapons projects were successfully completed, previously secret atomic science began to become involved in intensive diplomatic processes. In part, they were stimulated by using scientific internationalism in the superpowers’ struggle for world hegemony. In 1953, US President Dwight Eisenhower initiated the “Atoms for Peace” program, one of whose goals was to “demilitarize” the country’s international image, undermined by the use of nuclear weapons in WWII and destructive nuclear tests.9 This policy resonated with the views of leading world scientists, who showed their own initiative in creating semi‑official movements and organizations, fighting for the non‑proliferation of nuclear weapons, ending nuclear tests, and preventing nuclear war.10

  • 11 David Holloway, “The Soviet Union and the Creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Cold (...)
  • 12 Hiroshi Ichikawa, “Obninsk, 1955. The World’s First Nuclear Power Plant and ‘The Atomic Diplomacy’ (...)
  • 13 David Holloway, Stalin i bomba : Sovetskii Soiuz i atomnaia ėnergiia. 1939‑1956 [Stalin and the bom (...)
  • 14 See, for example, on Soviet participation in the Pugwash movement : Fabian Lüscher, “Party, Peers, (...)
  • 15 David Holloway, “The Soviet Union and the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” 186.

4“Atoms for Peace” was initially greeted with skepticism by the Soviet leadership, but after some time the USSR entered negotiations on the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency. These negotiations centered on questions concerning the possible development of the peaceful use of atomic energy as a counterweight to the unfolding nuclear arms race.11 As early as 1954, the USSR announced the launch of the first peaceful nuclear power plant on its territory.12 The head of the Soviet atomic project, Igor´ Kurchatov, actively fought against the international isolation of Soviet physicists and lobbied for the partial declassification of nuclear topics that were without direct military significance, thereby making it possible for the Soviet delegation to participate in the First Conference on the Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy in Geneva in August 1955.13 Immediately thereafter, Soviet scientists began to join the cross‑border networks of the international peaceful movement.14 At the same time, the very question of the possible participation of the USSR in the new international nuclear agency proved to be the subject of debate within the country’s leadership : while the military feared that this channel would allow the enemy to discover the USSR’s real shortcomings in nuclear forces, the Foreign Ministry’s Department of International Organizations argued that “if the Soviet Union did not take part, the United States would dominate the process of international collaboration in this area.”15

  • 16 Rindzevičiūtė, The Power of Systems, 28.
  • 17 Paul R. Josephson, “Atomic‑Powered Communism : Nuclear Culture in the Postwar USSR,” Slavic Review, (...)
  • 18 Stefan Guth, “Oasis of the Future. The Nuclear City of Shevchenko/Aqtau, 1959–2019,” Jahrbücher für (...)
  • 19 Rindzevičiūtė, The Power of Systems, 26, 30–31, 36.

5The impulse for the development of peaceful nuclear technologies in the USSR in the 1950s–60s appeared to be part of a wider political turn associated with the beginning of the Thaw. The new generation of Soviet leaders proclaimed a transition from the Stalinist doctrine of the inevitability of a world war between socialism and capitalism to the idea of ​peaceful competition between the two systems. One of the central elements of the new ideological regime was the slogan of “scientific and technological revolution,” which “placed the fundamental science along with technology as drivers of innovations.”16 Historian Paul Josephson proposed the concept of “atomic‑powered communism,” analyzing how nuclear technology became embedded in the discourse and practice of building socialism in the USSR after Stalin.17 Along with international nuclear showcasing, used as a tool in global confrontation, nuclear technoscience began to serve as an ideologically neutral channel through which “East and West interacted not so much as potential opponents in a nuclear war, but rather as shareholders of a common technocratic rationality.”18 On a higher political level, Soviet political leaders such as the chairmen of the Council of Ministers, Nikolai Bulganin and Alexei Kosygin, officially proclaimed the opportunity for the partial opening of the Soviet system through East–West scientific collaboration and international technology transfer.19

  • 20 For instance, most of the first Soviet energy reactors coincidently produced weapons‑grade plutoniu (...)
  • 21 Sonja D. Schmid, Producing Power : The pre‑Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry (Boston (...)

6One of the main controversies of the political use of atomic energy was that the “peaceful atom” could not be easily isolated from the military nuclear program. Even after Soviet scientists made sensational reports on their achievements in reactor and accelerator physics at the Geneva conference in 1955, the task of separating military and peaceful nuclear technologies posed a serious difficulty for the Soviet authorities.20 The development of the peaceful uses of atomic energy in the USSR was monitored by the Ministry of Medium Machine Building (Sredmash), a super‑agency formed in 1953 on the basis of the First Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was responsible for the creation of nuclear weapons. As Sonja Schmid has shown, Sredmash’s military‑influenced work ethic hampered the transfer of nuclear knowledge to the civilian authorities, which caused difficulties in the operation of the industrial nuclear power plants and became one of the reasons for the Chernobyl disaster.21

  • 22 This was due on the one hand to the possibility of producing weapons‑grade fissile materials in ind (...)
  • 23 N.A. Rusakovich, ed., Istoriia sozdaniia sinkhrotsiklotrona OIIaI (v dokumentakh i vospominaniiakh)(...)
  • 24 G.V. Kiselëv, ed., Nauchnoe nasledie laureata Nobelevskoi premii akademika N.N. Semenova v sovetsko (...)
  • 25 Krige, American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe, 58–73.

7Under these conditions, while reactor physics and nuclear energy application continued to be militarily sensitive sectors,22 the need arose to develop alternative channels for international scientific and technical cooperation. One of the most successful projects in this regard has been accelerator particle physics. Both in the USSR and abroad, this discipline was initially driven by the military nuclear program. In the 1940s, the first plutonium samples were produced using particle accelerators ; in early 1950s, accelerators helped refine nuclear constants for calculating the process of a hydrogen bomb explosion ;23 there were even projects to use a beam of accelerated particles to deactivate nuclear warheads.24 By the mid‑1950s, there were, however, almost no urgent military tasks in this research area. Representatives of the Western political elite in tandem with leading scientists (some of whom were previously involved in military programs) chose this field of study as a playground for transnational institutional experiments. This resulted in the emergence of CERN from the combined efforts of the Western European elites and the active role of the United States.25 Despite the presence of the letter “N” (for nuclear) in the name of the organization, the main content of CERN’s scientific work was not nuclear, but high‑energy physics, which is experimentally studied using particle accelerators. The CERN concept emphasized the fundamental nature of this scientific discipline, designed to provide all of humanity access to the basic secrets of the universe.

  • 26 Holloway, Stalin i bomba, 455.
  • 27 From the letter of I.V. Kurchatov to L.P. Beria. Rusakovich, ed., Istoriia sozdaniia sinkhrotsiklot (...)

8The Soviet Union reacted to the challenge of nuclear globalization, posed by the US, in two ways. On the one hand, in 1955, even before the start of the first Geneva conference, the USSR announced its support for research on the peaceful uses of atomic energy in China, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and East Germany, and concluded agreements with these countries to provide research equipment and fissile materials.26 The second step was the creation of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna in 1956, which, like CERN, was founded as a center for fundamental research in the field of high‑energy physics. Scientists who had promoted the creation of powerful accelerators in the USSR alluded to the possible discovery of “new ways to get atomic energy from cheaper sources than uranium.”27 However, both the scale of material, intellectual and organizational resources invested in the high‑energy physics program and its international overtones were certainly a response to the similar program in Europe supported by the US.

Dubna, on the Volga : from a secret laboratory to the shop window of socialism

  • 28 V.G. Kadyshevskii, A.N. Sisakian and Ts.D. Vylov, eds., Dubna : ostrov stabil´nosti. Ocherki po ist (...)
  • 29 The popular metaphor for particle accelerator in the Soviet press. See for example : “‘Piramidy XX  (...)

9The history of Dubna as a scientific center began 10 years before the creation of JINR. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the location on the northern outskirts of Moscow Oblast´ was chosen by Lavrenty Beria in 1946 as the site for the first Soviet synchrotron due to the spatial remoteness of the area: “The village is far enough from Moscow and it will be easier to maintain secrecy; scientists will not be distracted from their main activity.28 More practical reasons were the Ivan´kovo hydro‑electric power station already situated nearby, along with the remnants of the Dmitlag infrastructure thanks to which the forced labour of Gulag prisoners could be easily mobilized to build the hi‑tech “pyramids of the 20th century.”29 The left bank of the Volga had already been used as the site for an aircraft factory that in 1951 started to produce aerodynamic missiles. In the second half of the 1940s it was joined by two secret research organizations on the right bank – the Institute of Nuclear Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences (initially named the Hydrotechnical Laboratory for reasons of secrecy), headed by Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Mikhail Meshcheriakov, and the Electrophysical Laboratory of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR under the direction of Academician Vladimir Veksler. These two research units were declassified in 1955 to constitute core laboratories of the new Joint Institute.

  • 30 George Ginsburgs, “Soviet Atomic Energy Agreements,” International Organization, 15, 1 (1961) : 48– (...)
  • 31 V.S. Emel´ianov, S chego nachinalos [What it started from] (M. : Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1979), 216.
  • 32 See “Zapiska pervogo zamestitelia ministra srednego mashinostroeniia SSSR B.L. Vannikova o sozdanii (...)
  • 33 Armin Hermann, Lanfranco Belloni, John Krige and Laura Weiss, History of CERN. vol. I, 250–251. It (...)
  • 34 See “Proekt pis´ma, napravlennogo rukovodstvu kompartii Pol´shi, Chekhoslovakii, GDR, Vengrii, Bolg (...)

10By the time the JINR Charter was signed on 26 March 1956, the USSR had already concluded bilateral agreements on cooperation in the development of research in the physics of the atomic nucleus with Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Romania, China, Bulgaria and Hungary, intended to support nuclear studies in these countries through transfer of technical documentation, physical facilities and materials from the USSR.30 This process of forced atomic integration within the Eastern Bloc had been accelerated by the 1955 UN‑sponsored Geneva Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. As it follows from the memoirs of the future chairman of the Chief Administration for the Use of Atomic Energy, Vasilii Emel´ianov, during the conference the Soviet delegation made an informal proposal to join CERN, which was politely rejected.31 According to some reports, at the same time Poland was invited to become a member.32 Although there are no traces of these negotiations in the CERN documents, potential expansion into Eastern Europe was one of the most‑discussed issues during the development of the organization’s concept and in the first years of its work.33 Thus the creation of the international institute in the East entered the policy agenda in view of the possible participation of Soviet satellites in a pan‑European scientific project and was aimed at protecting and strengthening Soviet dominance in the region.34

  • 35 Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Mongolia, and North Kore (...)
  • 36 L.F. Zhidkova, Istoriia Dubny : 1956‑1986 [History of Dubna : 1956‑1986] (Dubna, 2006), 42.
  • 37 This was primarily the case for Czechoslovakia, Poland, the DDR and Bulgaria. Interview with Vladim (...)
  • 38 According to the first vice‑director of JINR Mariam Danysz, as referenced in the anonymous report o (...)

11All the pre‑existing research facilities in Dubna were provided to the new institute free of charge by the Soviet state. The USSR’s annual financial contribution to JINR was the largest, accounting for 50 %, followed by that of China with 20 %, while only 30 % came from the remaining 9 countries.35 As early as the autumn of 1956, the first 16 employees from the participating countries went to work at JINR. In 1958, the number of foreign employees reached 80 ; in 1965 there were almost 300, and in 1975 over 400 (about a third of the total number of employees). During the first 20 years, around 2,000 specialists from the member states had the opportunity to work in Dubna.36 The majority stayed in the USSR for 3–5 years – enough time to assemble material for a dissertation – and contributed to the institute’s work not only with their minds, but also with various items of research equipment.37 Obviously part of the big political game in Eastern Europe, the creation of JINR was considered by insiders to be a somewhat practical measure : the large membership fees “relieved the Russians of much of the financial burden of the Institute” while “the efficiency of research” could be “greatly increased by the ideas of Middle Eastern [European] research workers, who in general had wider scientific horizons” than their Soviet colleagues.38

  • 39 Gary Hausladen even describes Dubna as a “one‑ministry town,” considering that the State Committee (...)
  • 40 See Roman Khandozhko, “Territoriia politicheskoi anomalii : Partiinaia zhizn´ v sovetskom atomnom g (...)
  • 41 The informal name of the city district dominated by the administrative and residential infrastructu (...)
  • 42 Zhidkova, Istoriia Dubny, 77.
  • 43 According to the study “Social Problems of a Small City,” conducted in Dubna by the Institute for C (...)
  • 44 Zhidkova, Istoriia Dubny, 42.

12JINR’s official governing body was the Committee of Plenipotentiaries, but the institute was unofficially supervised by the Ministry of Medium Machine Building and the State Committee for the Utilization of Atomic Energy, being de facto part of the Soviet “nuclear archipelago.”39 As in the cases of other Soviet nuclear centers, such patronage produced complicated configurations of local power in which the city party committee had only a limited influence and communities of physicists enjoyed extensive opportunities to lobby for their interests.40 The peculiarity of urban planning in the case Dubna was that the nuclear institute was created in close proximity to the pre‑existing industrial enclaves – the Ivankovskaya hydroelectric station and the plant of the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry, around which workers’ townships had grown from the late 1930s onwards. In 1960, these industrial villages were annexed to the “institutional part”41 of Dubna, but this oasis of modernity was still closely surrounded by poorly developed rural settlements. All of this predetermined the complex social composition of the urban population and the special functions of the CPSU city committee, which mediated the interests of diverse city stakeholders. From 1956 to 1970, Dubna’s population grew from 2 to 44 thousand,42 approximately equally distributed between the institute (41 %) and industrial (46.4 %) parts of the city.43 In the early 1970s, about 10 % of the city’s population consisted of JINR employees.44

  • 45 Thus, at the Dubna city party conference in 1960, the first director of JINR, Dmitrii Blokhintsev, (...)
  • 46 A meson is a class of composite elementary particles, the study of which was actively conducted at (...)
  • 47 Using the terms “atomic imperialism” and “scientific imperialism,” I follow the tradition in imperi (...)

13In contrast to the atomic bomb program and the field of nuclear reactor engineering, which were aimed at solving specific practical problems, high‑energy physics in the post‑war era perceived itself rather as a pure science which could only potentially have practical applications. As the invention of the accelerator in 1931 allowed researchers to destroy the atomic nucleus in a laboratory setting for the first time and so open a new atomic age, their heirs of the 1950s argued for an increase in public investment in the study of the fundamental structure of matter, the understanding of which, it was believed, could help to discover new sources of energy much more powerful than nuclear decay.45 In the short term, these great hopes were not justified, and Soviet scientists regularly had to answer inconvenient questions from their party bosses (“Why do we need a meson for agriculture ?”46) – even though certain aspects of the new particle physics were applied in such fields as geological exploration, reactor protection or radio‑oncology. In these conditions, the technopolitical component came to the fore : the accelerators began to play the role of the interface of Soviet “atomic imperialism”47 and an important platform for the race with the West, allowing Dubna to become successfully integrated into the propagandistic logic of the confrontation between socialistic and capitalistic systems.

  • 48 The Annual Report of the Dubna City Committee of the CPSU at the 2nd City Party Conference, Decembe (...)
  • 49 Gordon Fraser, The Quark Machines : How Europe Fought the Particle Physics War (Bristol : Inst. of (...)
  • 50 Gottfried Münzenberg and Matthias Schädel, Moderne Alchemie : Die Jagd nach den schwersten Elemente (...)

14The competitive construction of new accelerators in the era of the Cold War took on the form of a fever. In 1949 in Dubna, the Institute for Nuclear Problems launched a synchrocyclotron capable of accelerating protons to the world high of 560 MeV. This record was surpassed in 1953 by the Cosmotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York (3 GeV). The new synchrophasotron at Veksler’s institute in Dubna became operational in 1957 and set a record of 10 GeV. Soon afterwards, in 1959, the CERN Proton Synchrotron surpassed the record by reaching 25 GeV, and a year later the laurels returned to the US when the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven achieved 30 GeV proton beams. Unwilling to retreat, the Soviet Union launched a new accelerator at the Institute for High Energy Physics at Protvino near Serpukhov (76 GeV, 1967). It held its leading position until 1972, when the US National Accelerator Laboratory built the 200‑GeV Main Ring. Thus particle accelerators constituted an important domain in which East and West pitted their technological strength against each other. While in the late 1950s Soviet party leaders hoped particle physicists could bring them a quick victory, presenting the world with a “Dubna Sputnik,”48 instead the country had to enter a protracted marathon to build up the energy of accelerators and to defend its position in the trench warfare with Western competitors in the continual discovery of new elementary particles49 and transuranium elements.50

  • 51 Sonja D. Schmid, “Nuclear Colonization ? Soviet Technopolitics in the Second World,” in Gabrielle H (...)

15Along with the fulfilment of the propaganda mission to demonstrate to the whole World the USSR’s leading position in the field, the Joint Institute in Dubna had the task of implementing the course of “nuclear assistance” within the Soviet sphere of influence. It was to direct the development of nuclear research in the “countries of people’s democracy” and to train cadres for national atomic programs, intensifying scientific and economic ties within the socialist bloc.51 To this end, the construction of stable transnational networks became critically important, enabling physicists from the socialist countries to work together and enter the international science arena to prove their superiority. The implementation of this program in the conditions of the late USSR required some flexibility and political will and did not always run smoothly. One of the most interesting social side‑effects was the appearance of an “international oasis” in the Soviet province which became a kind of “place of transition” between two worlds separated by the Iron Curtain.

Penetrating the Iron Curtain

16The course of “scientific imperialism” required of the Soviet Union more flexible modes of interaction with the outside world than those that had developed in the late Stalin era. As a result, the emerging Iron Curtain of the mid‑1950s was equipped with the channels which allowed its penetration.

  • 52 The Swedish theorist Gunnar Källén. See “Vsesoiuznoe soveshchanie po kvantovoi ėlektrodinamike i te (...)
  • 53 One of the conference participants, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Moisei Mar (...)
  • 54 Fabian Lüscher, “The Nuclear Spirit of Geneva. Boundary‑Crossing Relationships of Soviet Atomic Sci (...)
  • 55 Krige, “Atoms for Peace,” 179.

17In the field of particle physics, a few ice‑breaking events occurred as early as the first half of 1955. The All‑Union Conference on Quantum Electrodynamics and Elementary Particle Theory at the Physical Institute of the Academy of Sciences (Moscow) in early April 1955 was attended, after a 15‑year break, by a participant from Western Europe.52 In June 1955, two Soviet scientists participated in a Conference on Elementary Particles in Pisa, Italy.53 But the real turning point re‑establishing scientific contacts between East and West on a diplomatic level was the first Geneva Conference in August 1955, during which Soviet and Western physicists came face to face on a public stage for the first time since the Second World War.54 As John Krige notes, “western colleagues were not just stunned, but panicked, by Soviet achievements,” referring primarily to the reports presented by Veksler and his colleagues on the physics of particle accelerators.55 In 1956, an international conference on high‑energy physics was held in Moscow, and its guests could visit the formerly secret site in Dubna, including the synchrocyclotron, which had already made a big splash in Geneva.

  • 56 Igor´ Tamm from the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in phys (...)
  • 57 Robert Eugene Marshak, “The Khrushchev Detente and Emerging Internationalism in Particle Physics,” (...)
  • 58 John Polkinghorne, Rochester Roundabout : The Story of High Energy Physics (New York : W.F. Freeman (...)
  • 59 Lüscher, “The Nuclear Spirit of Geneva,” 32.

18After the first Geneva Conference, representatives of the Dubna institute continued to integrate into the international high‑energy physics community diplomatically and scientifically. In 1957, the Soviet Union became a member of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, within the framework of which a high‑energy physics commission began work in early 1958. This commission, two of whose six members represented the USSR,56 determined the venues for the next world particle physics conferences (known as the Rochester conferences) : CERN (Switzerland) in 1958, Kiev (USSR) in 1959 and Rochester (USA) in 1960.57 Scientific results of the first two years of JINR’s work, presented at CERN in July 1958, had been met with a rather a skeptical reception,58 but this did not prevent the continuation of the triumphant return of Soviet physics to the international diplomatic scene at the second Geneva Conference in September 1958, where the Soviets scored a major coup with their tokamak for fusion research. It is worth noting that in the face of increasing tension in the Cold War, in 1958 the Soviet side presented the field of nuclear science more clearly as an “arena of competition between capitalism and socialism.”59

  • 60 Frank Close, Half‑Life : The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy (New York : Basic B (...)
  • 61 Simone Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair : A Cold War Defection and Nuclear Physics (Chicago : Unive (...)
  • 62 For example, he is said to have be an inculcator of tennis and scuba diving among Dubna scientists  (...)

19Apart from representing Soviet science at international meetings, Dubna started to welcome foreign scientists and diplomats onto its own territory. One of the first Western scholars to visit the future scientific city in 1953 was the communist‑minded physicist from France, Frederic Joliot‑Curie. But even earlier, back in 1950, the Hydrotechnical Laboratory in Dubna had become involved in an international scandal with a crossing of the Iron Curtain. Italian physicist Bruno Pontecorvo, who had mysteriously disappeared during his vacation, secretly started to work at the Dubna synchrocyclotron. Pontecorvo was born into an Italian Jewish family in 1913, had worked in France, Canada and the United Kingdom, and at the time of his disappearance was employed at the Harwell Laboratory (UK). He was a convinced communist and a member of the Italian Communist Party. The circumstances of his illegal transition to the USSR have yet to be unravelled by historians ; it is widely believed that ever since working in Canada he had spied on the Soviet Union.60 His stay in Dubna remained secret for five years, and it was not until 1955 that Pontecorvo resurfaced, giving a press conference in Moscow. Isolated from international scientific life, he was not allowed to leave Dubna or even freely communicate with his Soviet colleagues until 1955, and it was not until 1978 that he visited his native Italy again. Although after his “legalization” in 1955 official sources spoke exclusively about the contribution of the Italian physicist to fundamental research on matter, the historian Simon Turcetti argues that Pontecorvo’s expertise was important for military and applied atomic research in the USSR.61 While far from voluntary, the emergence of Pontecorvo in Dubna is referred to in memoirs as one of the first seeds of Western scientific culture and the Western lifestyle in the Soviet science city.62

  • 63 Although according to memoirs (V.G. Kadyshevskii, A.N. Sisakian and Ts.D. Vylov, eds., Dubna : ostr (...)
  • 64 It should be mentioned that, at the initial stage, the Ministry of Medium Machine Building did not (...)
  • 65 Victor Weisskopf, Mein Leben : Ein Physiker, Zeitzeuge und Humanist erinnert sich an unser Jahrhund (...)
  • 66 For instance, in 1958 the Ministry organized a visit to the Dubna accelerators by foreign participa (...)

20From 1955 onwards, when the scientific center and the research conducted therein were partially declassified, official delegations of foreign scientists begin to visit Dubna.63 After the sensational reports on the Soviet particle accelerators at the Geneva conference in 1955, for a few years Dubna became a mandatory destination in the USSR for Western physicists and scientific administrators seeking to assess the real state of the Soviet research infrastructure.64 For their part, the Soviet authorities were interested in promoting Dubna as a world‑class international research centre and a showcase of socialist science development. Numerous day trips to JINR were organized for the leading foreign scientists. According to the future director of CERN, Victor Weisskopf, who visited Dubna in 1955, he and his colleagues were impressed by the state of Soviet science : “It was at a higher level of development than we had expected, though certainly not at the Western level.”65 Unlike some projects in the field of reactor development that Soviet top management rated as of military importance, particle accelerators constituted a more open domain, separated from militarily sensitive research and thus more suitable for showcasing Soviet breakthroughs in cutting‑edge science.66

  • 67 V.P. Dzhelepov, “Vizit v Dubnu Nil´sa Bora [Nils Bohr’s visit to Dubna],” in E.P. Velikhov, ed., Na (...)

21In addition to brief familiarization visits, JINR invited leading scientists for 2–3 week stays, during which they gave lectures and established formal “diplomatic relations” between their organizations and JINR. The most prominent visitor of this kind was the “father” of the European nuclear physics Niels Bohr in 1961, who represented the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen.67

  • 68 CERN Archive, WOL‑071 ; “Postanovlenie Sekretariata TsK KPSS ‘O priglashenii v SSSR sotrudnika Labo (...)
  • 69 I.G. Zarubina, ed., Akademik A.M. Baldin. K 75‑letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia [Academician A.M. Baldin. (...)

22After announcing the launch of the world’s largest accelerator in 1957, JINR began to implement a common international practice of mutual long‑term research visits. In this respect, France became the pioneer and the “discoverer” of Dubna in the West. It agreed to exchange specialists with JINR in late 1956, the first French scientist arriving in Dubna in 1958.68 The first Soviet scientist from Dubna to visit the West for a long‑term research stay was A.M. Baldin. He worked in the laboratory of Rudolf Peierls at the University of Birmingham, England, for several months in 1957–58.69

  • 70 William Owen Lock, “Collaboration CERN‑JINR (Dubna) and CERN‑USSR 1955‑1975,” Europhysics News, 6, (...)
  • 71 As stated in an anonymous report by a Hungarian refugee who spent three months in Dubna during 1956 (...)
  • 72 F.C. Frank and D.H. Perkins, “Cecil Frank Powell. 1903–1969,” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of th (...)
  • 73 Weisskopf, Mein Leben, 29, 66–73.

23Thereafter, a large‑scale program of scientific exchange with JINR was set in motion at CERN. The initiative came from the East – in 1957 it was suggested during the visit to Geneva by the first Vice‑Director of JINR, Marian Danysz.70 Born into a family of Polish‑French physicists in Paris in 1909, Danysz had been well connected in the European physics circles before the dawn of the Iron Curtain.71 After graduating at Warsaw University, he worked from 1950–52 in Britain at the University of Bristol’s emulsion laboratory headed by Cecil Powell, a leftist who had won the Nobel Prize in 1950 and was one of the major figures in cosmic ray physics. Powell had been chairman of the Science Policy Committee at CERN and a founder member of the Pugwash movement, and thus a key figure in West–East scientific mediation.72 One of Danysz’s colleagues in the remarkable international team assembled by Powell in Bristol was Owen Lock, who also moved to Geneva in 1960 and became a key mediator in the relationships between CERN and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 70s. One of the most significant promoters of CERN–Soviet contact was also the fifth director general of CERN, Victor Weisskopf, whose socialist sympathies in his youth had seen him make a six‑month visit to Soviet Russia in 1932, during which he formed close friendships with some important figures in Soviet physics.73

  • 74 CERN Archive, CM‑P00075968‑e, p. 16.
  • 75 CERN Archive, CM‑P00076665‑e, p. 10.

24Thus, one of the driving forces for developing closer contacts with Western European physics appeared to be researchers from Eastern Europe invited to Dubna who did not want to break off the scientific ties they had already established with the West. It is essential to note that CERN received direct proposals for cooperation from physicists from the socialist camp. In 1956, at a meeting of the CERN Council, a request from Czechoslovak scientists to work at the accelerator in Geneva and the possible entry of Poland into CERN were discussed.74 The question of Poland’s accession was raised at CERN repeatedly until the early 1960s but was always rejected because of fears that this would trigger a negative response from the USSR. Nevertheless, Poland was the first and only country in the socialist camp to be granted observer status at CERN in 1963.75

  • 76 Visit to Moscow, 31 May to 7 June, 1960. Notes by J.B. Adams [Draft]. CERN Archive, JBA‑179.
  • 77 Lock, “Collaboration CERN‑JINR (Dubna) and CERN‑USSR 1955‑1975,” 1.

25The matter of regular exchange of scientists between JINR and CERN was raised again in 1959 in a letter by Professor Nikolai Bogoliubov, the head of the Laboratory of Theoretical physics of JINR, to the Director‑General of CERN, Cornelis Bakker. After several discussions at the Committee of the Council of CERN, the proposal was accepted. In 1960, new director of CERN, John Adams, came to Dubna for a five‑day visit during which he not only gave talks and inspected the laboratories of the institute, but also engaged in intensive informal networking, spending each evening “with one or other of the families of the senior scientists, eating the evening meal in their houses.”76 In July 1960, the first three Soviet physicists arrived at CERN, and six month later three specialists from CERN came to Dubna to spend three to eight months at various JINR laboratories.77

  • 78 A.A. Rastorguev, “Kontaktov ne izbezhat´ [Contacts cannot be avoided]” (2010), https://www.proza.ru (...)
  • 79 Lock, “Collaboration CERN‑JINR (Dubna) and CERN‑USSR 1955‑1975,” 1.

26Regular exchanges between Dubna and CERN began against the background of the frosty period in Soviet–American relations due to the U‑2 spy plane incident in May 1960 followed by the Berlin Wall (1961) and the Cuban missile crisis (1962). The mounting international tension had an impact on the general climate of contact between Soviet and Western physicists, which came under closer scrutiny from the security services.78 Nevertheless, the exchange program with CERN developed into permanent relationships and was of interest to both parties, on both the scientific and the political level. In 1963 CERN established the Travelling Fellowship scheme, whereby scientists from the Member States of CERN received financial assistance to visit Dubna for periods ranging from a few weeks up to one year.79

  • 80 A.A. Rastorguev, “Govorun i ego komanda [Govorun and his team],” in B.M. Starchenko, ed., OIIaI. Vr (...)
  • 81 A. Bertelo and R.M. Sulyaev, “Puzyr´kovaia kamera “Mirabel´” na Serpukhovskom uskoritele [Mirabelle (...)

27For Dubna, visits to CERN were especially important because Soviet high‑energy physics suffered from a lack of communication with other laboratories. Since the mid‑1960s, when Dubna’s lagging behind Western science in a number of important areas became noticeable, maintaining contacts with CERN and other Western institutions facilitated transfer of knowledge and technology in the most sensitive domains of Soviet backwardness. A striking example was implementation of computer technologies and data processing standards ; for example, while working as an exchange scientist in Geneva in 1965, Dubna’s future assistant director of the Laboratory of Computer Engineering Nikolai Govorun became acquainted with CERN’s main programming language FORTRAN and implemented it in Dubna upon his return.80 Other assistance was more direct : with the help of CERN, the large hydrogen bubble chamber “Mirabelle” was constructed in France’s Nuclear Research Center (Saclay) and delivered to the new accelerator facility in Serpukhov in 1970.81 In the 1970s, CERN continued to assist Soviet high‑energy physicists with constructing and purchasing specialised equipment that was difficult to obtain through other channels.

  • 82 Adrienne Kolb and Lillian Hoddeson, “The Mirage of the “World Accelerator for World Peace” and the (...)

28From the late 1950s, high‑energy physics communities in East and West had been looking for opportunities to combine their technical and scientific capacities to achieve new results unreachable by any single national laboratory. The most impressive attempt of this kind was “The World Accelerator for World Peace” project, actively discussed at international meetings since 1959, which sought to create an intercontinental accelerator laboratory on neutral territory by pooling the resources of the USSR, the USA and Europe.82 In the face of the Soviet–American crisis in the early 1960s, this idea seemed something of a fantasy, although even at the 1963 “Meeting on International Collaboration in High‑Energy Physics” held in Dubna most of the participants seriously advocated its realizability and discussed possible timings.

  • 83 CERN Archive, JBA‑76.

29At the same time, the development of several more viable forms of cooperation was on the agenda : namely the exchange of experimental teams and common exploitation of continental machines. According to Victor Weisskopf’s report, “both the American and the Russian representatives were very eager to […] exert pressure on their authorities to allow long term visitors into their corresponding laboratories.”83 By the end of the decade this initiative became a reality and the inter‑bloc contacts between leading physicists evolved into joint experiments which required integration of the technological efforts of the participating countries, ongoing preparatory communication between research groups (including regular mutual visits, telephone and telex conversations), and long‑term research stays by participating researchers at foreign laboratories during experiments.

  • 84 Vitaly S. Pronskikh, “E‑36 : The First Proto‑Megascience Experiment at NAL,” Physics in Perspective(...)
  • 85 Interview with Vladimir Nikitin, 01.07.2017, Dubna.

30Collaboration between Dubna scientists and their American colleagues culminated in the E‑36 experiment on small angle proton–proton scattering, conducted by an international team of seven Dubna‑ and nine US‑based physicists at the National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, from 1972 onwards. The idea was to use a hydrogen gas jet, developed by the Soviet group, as a target inside the American accelerator with the world’s highest 200 GeV proton beam, which had just become operational in Batavia. Several tons of Soviet equipment were transported to the United States to work on the American accelerator. The set of experiments was preceded by a lot of work to ensure the technical compatibility of Soviet and American installations and to overcome stereotypes concerning “foreign technologies.”84 On the Soviet side, the whole project was under the strict supervision of the State Committee for the Utilization of Atomic Energy and its chief Andranik Petros´iants : thus, of the seven Dubna scientists who had prepared the initial experiment proposal, one was not allowed to travel and was replaced by “their man” without any explanation.85

  • 86 CERN Archive, JBA‑128.
  • 87 Cited by : CERN Archive, DIRADM/21, File 2.
  • 88 The Helsinki Final Act, reproduced in : John Fry, The Helsinki Process : Negotiating Security and C (...)

31On the political level, the joint experiment became part of the latest thaw in US–Soviet atomic relations, formalized by a bilateral memorandum of February 10, 1970. In the November of the same year, the document was complemented by a protocol for conducting joint projects in the field of high energy physics, and in September 1971 the special annex on the experiment in proton–proton scattering was added to the outline of future activity at NAL.86 After Richard Nixon’s visit to Moscow in 1972, in June 1973 the US and the USSR governments completed an agreement on scientific and technical cooperation in the field of peaceful uses of atomic energy. One of the three areas of cooperation established by the document was “research on the fundamental properties of matter,” including “joint theoretical and experimental studies […] in high, medium and low energy physics, through utilization of accelerators, data processing equipment and other facilities of the two countries.”87 Following the US–Soviet agreements, at the zenith of détente the “study of problems in high energy physics” was also included in the second basket of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975.88

  • 89 Pronskikh, “E‑36,” 357.
  • 90 Ibid., 370.
  • 91 Interview with Vladimir Nikitin, 01.07.2017, Dubna.

32The eight‑year cooperation that began with the E‑36 experiment proved to be successful in providing “valuable experimental grounding for the emerging theories that would eventually become the standard model.”89 It was broken by the Americans in 1980 in protest at the persecution of the dissident Academician Andrei Sakharov and the outbreak of the Afghanistan war,90 although by then, in the opinion of one of the project’s initiators, Vladimir Nikitin, its heuristic potential had been practically exhausted.91

33Besides the collaboration project at NAL, in the 1970s scientists from Dubna participated in several joint experiments at CERN’s Intersecting Storage Rings and Super Proton Synchrotron. One of the successful collaborations was the NA‑4 experiment on inclusive deep inelastic muon scattering on hydrogen and deuterium, launched in 1978, to which Dubna made a technical contribution by creating multiwire proportional chambers and steel modules. All these joint projects demonstrated an ever‑increasing international integration of basic research in which the Soviet Union managed to occupy one of the important niches. This integration worked as a double‑edged sword, allowing the Eastern bloc to have access to the latest achievements of Western science and technology, and on the other hand forming an interaction zone in which stable informal relations inevitably led to cultural and ideological interpenetration.

The Communist Party as a manager of international communication

34While the external PR campaign created an idyllic image of JINR’s international team, inscribing it into the propaganda framework of “friendship between peoples,” inevitable contact with foreigners inside and outside the institution were a source of constant concern for the party and KGB officials. The key bodies in this matter were the institute’s First Department and International Relations Department.

35JINR coordinated the nuclear research in the member states, so Soviet specialists regularly had to participate in consultations, meetings and collaborative projects in the satellite countries. To implement this program, the JINR leadership had to fight for the opportunity for its employees to travel abroad without unnecessary bureaucratic red tape. This problem was voiced at the 3rd city party conference in 1958 by the director of the institute, D.I. Blokhintsev :

  • 92 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 151, l. 33. According to the observation of the Czech physicist Franz (...)

Document preparation for travelling abroad is so slow that travel becomes meaningless by the time it is formalized. For registration documents, we need one and a half months, and even more time is required to process it in the Chief Directorate, so while we make plans, everything collapses [...] The situation is becoming ridiculous, because we have to send a Hungarian or a Romanian to conferences, as it is too difficult to prepare documents for our comrades.92

  • 93 The standard version of this procedure is described in Maria Rogacheva, The Private World of Soviet (...)

36In the 1960s, the exit procedure was speeded up, but remained opaque. As at other Soviet research institutes, every personal case required multistage approval from the party and KGB officials,93 but unlike the institutions of the USSR Academy of Sciences, mostly dependent in this issue on the respective international departments, all the international business trips in Dubna were supervised by the Chief Administration for the Use of Atomic Energy (Glavatom).

  • 94 Rastorguev, “Proekt ‘OIIaI’.”
  • 95 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 29, l. 69.

37The greatest concern was caused by contact with representatives of the capitalist West. Only a small number of leaders of Dubna science who enjoyed the confidence of the central leadership could take part in the Geneva conferences of 1955 and 1958 and the Rochester conference at CERN in 1958. For a significant number of rank‑and‑file Dubna scientists, the first experience of interaction with Westerners came at a conference on high‑energy physics in Kiev in 1959. According to A.A. Rastorguev, “instructing Dubna physicists before the trip [...] the chief of the regime’s department warned : “This time, comrades, you will not be able to avoid contact.” This phrase was then passed on from mouth to mouth.”94 The city committee of the CPSU in Dubna even insisted that sending JINR employees to the conference should follow a similar procedure as foreign business trips. In fact, not all laboratory heads authorized the lists of business travelers with party committees, “which led to a low percentage of party members among the alleged participants.”95

  • 96 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 4, l. 306.
  • 97 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 4, l. 308.
  • 98 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 6, l. 33.
  • 99 By 1961 Danysz had already left Dubna. TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 6, l. 33.

38There was no less distrust of the Western researchers who came to Dubna : they were considered to show “an increased interest in issues not related to their activities,”96 and the city party committee regularly demanded “increased revolutionary vigilance” on the part of the city’s residents and the institute’s employees.97 The local security bodies were particularly concerned about the behaviour of amateur photographers whose lenses could capture the secret objects of the left bank of the Volga.98 Some employees from the countries of “people’s democracy” also fell under the suspicion of the Soviet authorities – for forming too close a friendship with Western colleagues and the alleged unauthorized transfer of information about the institute’s work. Thus in 1961 former vice‑director of JINR Danysz faced the accusation that he had “taken away the method developed [in Dubna] for emulsions, and then, at CERN in Geneva, transferred this method without the consent of the authors.”99

  • 100 CERN Archive, DIRADM. PERS/13‑2, File 1.
  • 101 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 4, d. 8, l. 62.
  • 102 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 4, d. 8, l. 43.

39When the program of scientific exchange with CERN was launched in 1960, the first three volunteers from the West came to Dubna. They included the German accelerator expert Erhardt Fischer and his pregnant wife. He had previously been a prisoner of war in the USSR for almost six years, “by the way not far from Dubna” and therefore had a good command of the Russian language.100 As reported at a Communist party meeting, Fischer “very often started discussions […] on political issues, in particular : on the reconciliation of the German question, the cessation of nuclear weapons tests, general disarmament and other issues. His point of view, of course, was to defend the position of ideologists of the West.” By the time of his departure, however, he was proclaimed as having changed his opinion about Soviet people and Soviet science.101 The wife of another guest from CERN, Swiss citizen Schneeberger, was accused of being “very negatively predisposed to our Soviet reality” and of “trying systematically and persistently to decorate the ‘charms’ and ‘advantages’ of the Western world and lifestyle.”102

  • 103 Arkhivnyi otdel Administratsii Dubny – Archival Division of the Dubna Administration, f. 1, op. 1, (...)

40From 1963 onwards, Dubna served as a venue for international conferences on high‑energy physics. For the city authorities, the conferences were a time of ideological mobilization : considerable material and propagandistic resources were invested in creating an attractive image of a showcase socialist city. For instance, before the conference on high‑energy accelerators in 1963 began, the executive committee of the City Council of Dubna asked the executive committee of the Moscow City Soviet for help carrying out works on the improvement not only of Dubna itself, but also cities and towns adjacent to the Moscow–Dubna highway. Among other things, there were plans to glaze and paint city buses, remove the remains of the collapsed barracks, organize shoeshines on the city streets, bring sand to the sandboxes, demolish unauthorized buildings for livestock and poultry, organize the sale of foreign newspapers and magazines, and finish the construction of the toilet at the city railway station.103

  • 104 Legar, Skazki o zolotoi kletke, 35.
  • 105 Ibid., 36.
  • 106 Ibid.

41The conferences attracted a significant number of foreign visitors and were accompanied by intense networking, not only professional, but also personal. The logic of international cooperation and the image of Dubna as an open city played into the hands of scientists, for whom ties with Western colleagues represented important social and professional capital. The party bosses and the First Department of the institute, in turn, tried to limit informal contacts between JINR staff and guests from the West. Thus before the conference on high‑energy physics started in the summer of 1964, Soviet employees had been instructed that it would be possible to invite Westerners home only with the consent of the First Department ; it was also to be informed about all meetings in cafes or restaurants.104 Employees from the Eastern Bloc countries also had difficulties : an unauthorized meeting with a Western counterpart could lead to party punishment. As the Czech physicist Franz Lehar observes, “It was impossible to invite someone home secretly in Dubna. Dubna was ‘a small town,’ and there were too many informers.”105 Despite the difficulties, Lehar himself managed to invite Nobel laureate Edwin Macmillan to dinner. As the memoirist believes, the obstacles and negative consequences associated with McMillan’s visit were avoided due to the high status of the guest : he was the director of Lawrence’s laboratory in Berkeley and “if Berkeley learned about this, Dubna’s prestige would have fallen.”106

  • 107 Mary K. Gaillard, A Singularly Unfeminine Profession : One Woman’s Journey in Physics (New Jersey : (...)
  • 108 F. Calogero, “Remembering Yakov Abramovich Smorodinsky,” in M. Shifman, ed., Under the Spell of Lan (...)

42The conferences and programs of mutual research visits constituted an important platform of cultural exchange and “citizen diplomacy.” As the American physicist affiliated with CERN in the 1970s Mary K. Gaillard recalls, “bearing gifts was standard for Soviets visiting the West ; we reciprocated, usually with books, from Agatha Christie to politics.”107 A similar exchange took place in Dubna : for example, the Italian physicist Francesco Calogero recalls that he regularly brought modern foreign literature to Professor Yakov Smorodinsky (who was not permitted to leave the country) and received Soviet art albums as a gift from him.108

  • 109 Legar, Skazki o zolotoi kletke, 6.
  • 110 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 4, d. 3, l. 37.
  • 111 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 24, l. 40.

43One of the most important concerns of the institute’s party organization and the City Party Committee was the propagation of socialist values among JINR staff members from the Eastern Bloc countries and “the education of the entire collective of the Institute in the spirit of internationalism”. Researchers from the countries of “people’s democracy” were sent to Dubna at the recommendation of local party committees with the ideological formulation “to become acquainted with the life of Soviet citizens building communism.”109 For instance, the CPSU together with the party groups of each national community tried to engage physicists in political activities such as lectures, communist feasts, and voluntary Saturday work. The task in this regard was as follows : “We must strive to ensure that every foreign specialist working in the institute returning to his homeland is an active agitator and propagandist of our Soviet reality.”110 However, although a significant proportion of foreigners in JINR were members of the respective parties, many went to Dubna to free themselves from excessive party supervision and were extremely reluctant to become involved in Soviet social life.111

  • 112 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 4, d. 3, l. 13.

44The process of “ideological upbringing” was indeed of a mutual nature. Documents of Dubna Gorkom are filled with constant alarm about the spread of ideas alien to the Soviet system and the threat of “coexistence of ideologies.”112 Not only guests from the capitalist West were recognized as the source of sedition, but also foreigners from participating countries. For example, at the meeting of the Dubna City Party Organization in April 1959, it was said :

  • 113 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 293, l. 6‑7.

We are faced with an insistent desire to foist samples of abstract art, to spread the crappy, useless magazine “Poland,” to show low‑quality movies [...] There are stilyagi still appearing at our House of Culture. It is really disgusting to look at them.113

In 1963, a clash of ideologies in the city’s House of Scientists was discussed at the plenum of the city committee:

  • 114 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 4, d. 3, l. 13.

The Chinese demand to show more Chinese films, the Poles go to the embassy and take their abstract films. This influence is dangerous for the younger generation. We told the Poles that we should do everything in moderation. They understood us correctly and stopped bringing these films, but they began to bring films of sexual content.114

  • 115 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 4, d. 7, l. 63.
  • 116 Sergei Polikanov, Razryv : Zapiski atomnogo fizika [The break. Notes of an atomic physicist] (Frank (...)

45The quantitative predominance of Western films over the Soviet ones was also condemned by the party leadership,115 as was the spread of Western dances and fashion trends among Dubna physicists.116

  • 117 John Wilson Lewis and Litai Xue, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1 (...)
  • 118 In 1960, out of a total of 200 foreign specialists at JINR, 65 were Chinese. See K.S. Medved´ and S (...)
  • 119 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 5, d. 3, l. 42.
  • 120 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 434, l. 89.
  • 121 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 5, d. 3, l. 43.
  • 122 Zhu Hong‑Yuan, talk delivered at the 12th Session of the JINR Scientific Council, May 31, 1965. Ref (...)

46Within 5 years from 1960 to 1965, the most acute problem on the inner ideological front was the confrontation with the Chinese comrades. The gradual deterioration of Soviet–Chinese relations after the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU became acute in 1959, when the Soviet Union refused to send a pre‑prepared mock‑up of the atomic bomb to China117 and took a neutral position on the Sino‑Indian conflict. In 1960, all Soviet specialists were withdrawn from China. Notwithstanding this conflict situation, Chinese physicists continued to work in Dubna, focusing on gaining expertise which could be useful for the atomic weapon program.118 After the Moscow Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties in February 1960, where the CPC openly challenged the CPSU, a new leader of the Chinese Communist party cell, Yao Yi (“Dubna Mao”), was sent to JINR. He started an active propaganda campaign within the walls of JINR and provoked Chinese scientists into changing their everyday attitudes towards their Soviet hosts : “The external behaviour of the Chinese has also changed. If before they smiled bowing low, now they pretend that they do not recognize you and try not to give way.”119 Furthermore, Chinese employees started to spread propagandistic literature in JINR, such as “a book ‘Long live Leninism,’ in which the Chinese Communist Party claims to be the leader.”120 The “sectarian views” of Chinese comrades and the “cult of personality” of Mao Zedong were denounced at a series of the Dubna CPSU committee meetings. It was also reported that the Chinese staff paid special attention to the work of the Laboratory of Neutron Physics, the most useful in the context of creating nuclear weapons, and other “things that they should not know about.”121 The aggravation of 1960 was followed by a slight softening of the confrontation and the curtailment of open propaganda by the Chinese at JINR, although on many issues concerning the governing of the institute the Chinese faction repeatedly took positions different from the Soviet ones. After the successful test of its atomic bomb in 1964, China withdrew from JINR. As formal reasons for this step, the Chinese representative at the meeting of the JINR Scientific Council referred to the Soviet Union’s transfer of part of the institute’s resources for the creation of an accelerator in Serpukhov without consultation with foreign members and its restricting access to the research reactor for representatives of Member States (against the background of freer visits to the corresponding laboratory by American guests).122

47Leaders of the city party committee also tried to control the communication between Soviet and foreign specialists on the everyday level. In 1961, a report to the bureau of the city committee “On the work of party organizations to strengthen the commonwealth of the staff of the participating countries” stated that

  • 123 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 4, l. 306. The sexual relations between Soviet female employees of th (...)

in the institute there were cases of individual Soviet scientists borrowing large sums of money from foreign specialists and not returning them for a long time, as well as cases of some scrofulous persons entering and having sexual relationships with employees from the participating countries.123

  • 124 Heinz und Elfi Barwich, Das rote Atom : Als deutscher Wissenschaftler im Geheimkreis der russischen (...)

48This case demonstrates an important sore spot for the outwardly westernized Dubna community: it constituted a place of encounter between several social worlds, making visible their economic and symbolic inequality. The workers of the left bank of the Volga, the collective farmers of the surrounding villages, the Soviet scientific staff of the institute and the few groups of foreigners differed greatly in their lifestyle and level of material prosperity. This was particularly noticeable at the level of material supplies: while it was almost impossible to buy meat in the local grocery stores in the 1960s, families of high‑ranking JINR employees could order any products by telephone through the “order table” and have them sent home delivery.124

  • 125 Tataina Strokovskaya, “Experience of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research as an Example of Inte (...)
  • 126 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 293, l. 6.
  • 127 On “Berezka shops” see : A.A. Ivanova, Magaziny “Berëzka”. Paradoksy potrebleniia v pozdnem SSSR [B (...)
  • 128 R. Brandt, “Visit to Dubna July – September 1966.” CERN Archive, DIRADM. PERS/13‑2‑FILE 2.
  • 129 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 4, l. 31–33.

49If the staff of JINR could be called a Soviet aristocracy, foreign specialists stood out even within this group due to their privileged position. From the early years of the Joint Institute, they were provided with better housing conditions and food supplies than Soviet specialists. In addition to the guardianship of the Soviet authorities, foreigners from the institute’s member countries also received support from their own embassies – this included cultural and material consumption, leisure activities and children’s education.125 It was easier for them to get tickets to metropolitan theatres, hotel rooms, and train or plane tickets. In the second half of the 1970s, when the shortages in the city became acute, a specialized grocery store was opened in Dubna for foreigners only. Despite that, staff from the foreign countries often expressed dissatisfaction with the living conditions in Dubna.126 According to memoirs, at times there were acute shortages of flour and fresh fruit. These problems were solved by purchasing products through embassies in Moscow and using “Berezka shops”127 : as one of the long‑term visitors from CERN reported in 1966, “one of us went every 10 days to Moscow into the Western‑currency food shop and bought there fruits, vegetables and – if necessary – good meat.”128 Soviet citizens who did not have access to the currency shops were forced in similar conditions to organize illegal “collective trips with the aim of buying fruit in other regions,” becoming subjects of party trials.129

  • 130 E.D. Fediun´kin, “Ave, Caesar !” Insait, no. 1 (1989) : 48–49.

50During the period of perestroika, social tensions became the driving force behind several public mobilization campaigns, and the question of the privileges of foreign specialists became the subject of public discussion. A proposal to close the store for foreigners sounded from the pages of the independent city newsletter Insight. Rumours circulated suggesting that there were warehouses in the city with food only for foreigners. Finally, tensions emerged over the unequal salaries of foreigners and Soviet specialists working at JINR. As one of the activists of the city political club E. D. Fediun´kin acerbically noted, “the Soviets in JINR have always been treated as colonial natives.”130

51The desire of the party leaders to present Dubna as an exemplary showcase of socialism at times led to deliberate breakdowns in the city communications in order to cut off unwanted contacts between foreign guests and the kolkhoz and proletarian population. This was especially evident during the international conference on high‑energy physics in 1964. According to memoirs, for the entire week of the conference, Dubna’s water transportation along the Volga was completely cut off (the jetty for boats was moved to the opposite shore), and the traffic police posts controlled automobile entrance to the city (including the dam way from the industrial left‑bank section). The main reason for this was the fear that locals would buy up scarce goods specially imported to the city grocery stores, such as high‑quality meat.

  • 131 Barwich, Das rote Atom, 244–248.
  • 132 Legar, Skazki o zolotoi kletke, 15.
  • 133 Polikanov, Razryv, 157.

52Despite all the precautions, close contacts with the West at times led the physicists from Dubna to break with the socialist camp. The first high‑profile case of this kind was the institute’s vice‑director Heinz Barwich from East Germany, who fled West during the third Geneva conference in 1964.131 According to the memoirs of Franz Lehar, 54 former Czechoslovak JINR employees left for the West after 1968.132 Lehar himself left legally for experimental work in Saclay (France), and for several years the Dubna Institute petitioned the Czechoslovak authorities to extend his documents, until in 1972 Lehar sought political asylum in France. But the most dramatic story involved Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Lenin Prize winner and CPSU member Sergei Polikanov (1926–1994). In the 1960s, he worked at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. According to his recollections, “A year and a half spent in Denmark turned out to be fatal. For a year and a half, I lived without boring party meetings, commissions, meetings of the party committee [...]”133 In the 1974, Polikanov proposed a joint experiment at CERN, but the authorities allowed him to travel only without his wife and children. After that, the physicist began to participate in the dissident movement and in 1978 eventually received the opportunity to emigrate with his family.

Conclusion

  • 134 Lillian Hoddeson, Adrienne W. Kolb, and Catherine Westfall, in their book on the history of Fermila (...)

53In the post‑war period, the Soviet Union was drawn into the process of scientific globalization, which manifested itself in the intensification of scientific exchange, an increase in the number of international publications, the active participation of Soviet scientists in conferences abroad, and finally long‑term joint experiments that became prototypes for modern megascience.134 At the same time, one can speak of a kind of “scientific imperialism,” since one aim of the USSR’s international scientific activity was to force scientific and technical integration of the countries of the socialist camp under the supervision of Soviet officials and scientific organizations. Nuclear and high‑energy physics became one of the most characteristic examples of this tendency, since they combined fundamental research with practically‑oriented explorations of new sources of energy.

  • 135 Baneke, “The Absence of the East,” 175.

54Historian David Baneke, discussing the launch of international scientific programs in Western Europe in the field of space research and particle physics, writes of “the absence of the East” in this process, given that the Cold War agenda for European players was relayed by the United States, and direct contacts and competition between Western Europe and the countries of the socialist bloc were not an important factor in this dynamic.135 In the present article, using an example of the interaction between CERN and JINR, I have sought to correct this thesis and to show that the competition between the two superpowers was not the only determining factor in scientific interaction in Europe, where the various players on both sides of the Iron Curtain had their own interests, including maintaining a single European scientific space beyond the division of Europe into the West and the East.

  • 136 This mechanism was obvious to the scientists themselves, as follows from the following anecdote : “ (...)

55One of these actors was the international community of physicists itself, which had already begun to evolve in the 1920s and early 30s, and in the 1950s started to experience intense re‑networking. Regardless of the political confrontation, scientists on both sides of the Iron Curtain proclaimed their unity based on the fundamental nature of the questions they worked on and the universal language in which their answers were formulated. To a certain extent, one can speak of the transnational identity of the scientific communities, which consciously sought to overcome isolationist sentiments within their countries. On the other hand, the idea of competitive confrontation between the two systems was quite sincerely supported by these communities, as it effectively allowed them to gain state resources and earn social prestige.136

56In this context, the creation of the Joint Institute was perceived by the Soviet atomic intelligentsia of the mid‑1950s as the first step towards the global openness of Soviet science. It was believed that after Dubna, other international centers would be established on the territory of the USSR. However, these dreams did not come true, and JINR remained the only one of its kind. It was forced to survive in the new conditions of escalating international tension in the early 1960s, and then to overcome the isolationist tendencies of the ensuing period of stagnation. The territory of a small scientific town became a kind of island in the aggressive environment in which foreigners were treated as spies, “ideological diversionists” and distributors of an “alien lifestyle.” Although JINR was primarily created to coordinate research within the socialist camp, it became an important channel of inter‑bloc communication, the place where the border could be crossed between the two worlds. Although this crossing was not always an easy task even here, for the wider circle of scientists who were allowed to travel for long‑term work in Europe and the United States, as well as for those who communicated with their Western counterparts in Dubna, the capitalist world was much closer in cultural and personal terms than for the overwhelming majority of the Soviet people.

57As a result, Soviet party leaders had to deal with a kind of “ideological radiation” emanating from fundamental science. This was clearly manifested in the example of Dubna, where the international directly permeated the local and in a bizarre way transformed the order of everyday life. The institute in Dubna was supposed to become an example of the practical implementation of the principles of socialist internationalism and the basis for the dissemination of Soviet ideological, organizational and scientific models among the socialist intelligentsia. In turn, the permanent residence of foreigners on Soviet territory set an unparalleled precedent of a relatively open community in a closed country, where all contacts with the outside world were strictly regulated. One of the aspects of the existence of this international enclave was the noticeable influence of foreign visitors on the daily life and urban space of Dubna, which turned the city into a kind of “inner West” and an important point on the Soviet cultural and political map.

  • 137 The first version of the name of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, proposed by Igor´ Kurcha (...)
  • 138 Loren M. Graham, “Big Science in the Last Years of the Big Soviet Union,” Osiris, 7, 40 (1992) : 49 (...)

58In this article, the “Eastern Institute”137 in Dubna is considered as one of the institutional hubs in the complex mosaic of the “global Cold War.” Highly internationalized scientific centers like Dubna were created in different regions of Europe and America, but for the Eastern Bloc it remained a unique phenomenon. According to the observations of Loren Graham, the organization of Soviet science was in many respects significantly different from its Western forms, and the institute in Dubna can be considered a vivid example of these differences. Due to the dominant role of the state in science, one of the main forms of its existence in the USSR was giant research institutes uniting up to several thousand researchers working under the centralized guidance of powerful leaders.138 The way the bureaucratic machinery of Soviet science and the Soviet authoritarian state in general responded to the challenges of scientific internationalization made Dubna very special in comparison with other contact zones of the Cold War.

  • 139 David‑Fox, “The Iron Curtain as Semipermeable Membrane.”
  • 140 Péteri, “Nylon Curtain.”

59To replace the old‑school metaphor of the Iron Curtain, historian Michael David‑Fox introduced the concept of the semi‑permeable membrane, drawing our attention to various regulated and unregulated communication channels which perforated the seemingly impenetrable border between the socialist and the capitalist worlds.139 Even before him, Gyorgy Peteri argued for the idea of the “nylon curtain” in discussing economic, cultural and political inter‑dependence between East and West during the Cold War.140 The Dubna case provides a further contribution to the historical deconstruction of the Iron Curtain, showing how the establishment of the stable scientific cooperation contributed to overcoming political and ideological divides, and at the same time potentiated the scientific‑technical showdown and struggle for global prestige, providing an arena for peaceful competition between the two systems. Since we are talking about the particle physics community, one could find an appropriate analytical allegory in the form of quantum tunneling – a quantum mechanical phenomenon whereby a particle passes through a potential barrier that it classically cannot penetrate.

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Notes

1 On the re‑interpreting of big science research in terms of networks see Catherine Westfall, “Rethinking Big Science. Modest, Mezzo, Grand Science and the Development of the Bevalac, 1971–1993,” Isis, 94, 1 (2003) : 30–56.

2 See for example Lillian Hoddeson, “Establishing KEK in Japan and Fermilab in the U.S. Internationalism, Nationalism, and High Energy Accelerators,” Social Studies of Science, 13 (1983) : 1–48 ; Raghavan Jayakumar, Particle Accelerators, Colliders, and the Story of High Energy Physics : Charming the Cosmic Snake (Berlin : Springer, 2012), 81–130.

3 Armin Hermann, Lanfranco Belloni, John Krige and Laura Weiss, History of CERN. vol. I (Amsterdam – New York : North‑Holland Physics Pub, 1987) ; John Krige, American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2008), 57–73.

4 Sari Autio‑Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy, “Introduction : The Cold War from a New Perspective,” in Sari Autio‑Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy, eds., Reassessing Cold War Europe (New York : Routledge, 2011), 1–15.

5 György Péteri, “Nylon Curtain. Transnational and Transsystemic Tendencies in the Cultural Life of State‑ Socialist Russia and East‑Central Europe,” Slavonica, 10, 2 (2004) : 113–123 ; Michael David‑Fox, “The Iron Curtain as Semipermeable Membrane. Origins and Demise of the Stalinist Superiority Complex,” in Patryk Babiracki, ed., Cold War Crossings : International Travel and Exchange across the Soviet Bloc, 1940s–1960s (Austin : Texas Univ. Press, 2013), 14–39.

6 David Baneke, “The Absence of the East : International Influences on Science Policy in Western Europe during the Cold War,” in Jeroen van Dongen, ed., Cold War Science and the Transatlantic Circulation of Knowledge (Leiden, Boston : Brill, 2015), 183.

7 Marc Elie, “Formulating the Global Environment : Soviet Soil Scientists and the International Desertification Discussion, 1968–91,” The Slavonic and East European Review, 93, 1 (2015) : 181–204.

8 Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, The Power of Systems : How Policy Sciences Opened up the Cold War World (Ithaca – London : Cornell University Press, 2016).

9 John Krige, “Atoms for Peace : Scientific Internationalism and Scientific Intelligence,” Osiris, 21 (2006) : 161–181 (162–164).

10 The most notable of these initiatives became the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. See : Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb : A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford : Stanford University Press, 1997) ; Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces : The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, 1999).

11 David Holloway, “The Soviet Union and the Creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Cold War History, 16, 2 (2016) : 177–193.

12 Hiroshi Ichikawa, “Obninsk, 1955. The World’s First Nuclear Power Plant and ‘The Atomic Diplomacy’ by Soviet Scientists,” Historia Scientiarium, 26, 1 (2016) : 25–41.

13 David Holloway, Stalin i bomba : Sovetskii Soiuz i atomnaia ėnergiia. 1939‑1956 [Stalin and the bomb : The Soviet Union and atomic energy. 1939‑1956] (Novosibirsk : Sibirskii khronograf, 1997), 456–458.

14 See, for example, on Soviet participation in the Pugwash movement : Fabian Lüscher, “Party, Peers, Publicity : Overlapping Loyalties in Early Soviet Pugwash, 1955–1960,” in Alison Kraft and Carola Sachse, eds., Science, (Anti‑) Communism and Diplomacy. The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs in the Early Cold War (Leiden – Boston : Brill, 2020), 121–155.

15 David Holloway, “The Soviet Union and the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” 186.

16 Rindzevičiūtė, The Power of Systems, 28.

17 Paul R. Josephson, “Atomic‑Powered Communism : Nuclear Culture in the Postwar USSR,” Slavic Review, 55, 2 (1996) : 297–324.

18 Stefan Guth, “Oasis of the Future. The Nuclear City of Shevchenko/Aqtau, 1959–2019,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 66, 1 (2018), 93–123 (115). Similar processes were also observed in the field of cybernetics and systems analysis, where the joint efforts of the USA and the USSR led to the emergence of the International Institute for Applied System Analysis. See Rindzevičiūtė, The Power of Systems, 53.

19 Rindzevičiūtė, The Power of Systems, 26, 30–31, 36.

20 For instance, most of the first Soviet energy reactors coincidently produced weapons‑grade plutonium. See Holloway, Stalin i bomba, 449–452.

21 Sonja D. Schmid, Producing Power : The pre‑Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry (Boston, MA : MIT Press, 2015), 75. Benjamin Peters makes similar observations about military–civilian transfers in the Soviet computer industry : Benjamin Peters, How Not to Network a Nation : The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (Cambridge, MA – London : MIT Press, 2016), 90.

22 This was due on the one hand to the possibility of producing weapons‑grade fissile materials in industrial reactors and, on the other hand, the use of reactor technologies in the armed forces (the nuclear submarine fleet).

23 N.A. Rusakovich, ed., Istoriia sozdaniia sinkhrotsiklotrona OIIaI (v dokumentakh i vospominaniiakh) [The history of the creation of the JINR synchrocyclotron (in Documents and memoirs)] (Dubna : OIIaI, 2014), 28, 38.

24 G.V. Kiselëv, ed., Nauchnoe nasledie laureata Nobelevskoi premii akademika N.N. Semenova v sovetskom atomnom proekte. Dokumenty, vospominaniia [The scientific heritage of Nobel Prize Winner academician N.N. Semenov in the Soviet atomic project. Documents, memoirs] (Sarov : RFIATs‑VNIIEF, 2015), 199–302.

25 Krige, American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe, 58–73.

26 Holloway, Stalin i bomba, 455.

27 From the letter of I.V. Kurchatov to L.P. Beria. Rusakovich, ed., Istoriia sozdaniia sinkhrotsiklotrona OIIaI, 11.

28 V.G. Kadyshevskii, A.N. Sisakian and Ts.D. Vylov, eds., Dubna : ostrov stabil´nosti. Ocherki po istorii Ob´´edinennogo instituta iadernykh issledovanii [Dubna : The island of stability. Essays on the history of the Joint Institute for nuclear research] (M. : Akademkniga, 2006), 17.

29 The popular metaphor for particle accelerator in the Soviet press. See for example : “‘Piramidy XX veka…’ [“Pyramids of the twentieth century...”],” Iunyi tekhnik, no. 2 (1968) : 20–21.

30 George Ginsburgs, “Soviet Atomic Energy Agreements,” International Organization, 15, 1 (1961) : 48–65 (50).

31 V.S. Emel´ianov, S chego nachinalos [What it started from] (M. : Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1979), 216.

32 See “Zapiska pervogo zamestitelia ministra srednego mashinostroeniia SSSR B.L. Vannikova o sozdanii Vostochnoi laboratorii iadernykh issledovanii [Note by First Deputy Minister of Medium Machine Building of the USSR V.L. Vannikov on the creation of the Eastern Laboratory for Nuclear Research],” reproduced in B.M. Starchenko, Iu.G. Shimanskaia and I.Iu. Shcherbakova, eds., Istoriia sozdaniia OIIaI v resheniiakh TsK KPSS. 1955‑1958 [The history of JINR in the Decisions of the Central Committee of the CPSU. 1955‑1958] (Dubna : OIIaI, 2015), 14‑15 ; A.A. Rastorguev, “Proekt ‘OIIaI’ [Project ‘JINR’],” http://samlib.ru/r/rastorguew_a_a/4_jinr.shtml, last visited 03.01.2020.

33 Armin Hermann, Lanfranco Belloni, John Krige and Laura Weiss, History of CERN. vol. I, 250–251. It is worth noting that the fears of the Soviet leadership about the split in the socialist camp were also provoked by the example of Yugoslavia, which had been one of the founders of CERN back in 1953. When creating JINR, Yugoslavia also received an official invitation from the Central Committee of the CPSU, but refrained from joining. See “Pis´mo TsK KPSS v TsK SKIu ot 14 ianvar´ia 1956 goda [Letter from the Central Committee of the CPSU to the Central Committee of the LCY, 14 January 1956],” reproduced in Starchenko, Shimanskaia and Shcherbakova, eds., Istoriia sozdaniia OIIaI v resheniiakh TsK KPSS, 21–22.

34 See “Proekt pis´ma, napravlennogo rukovodstvu kompartii Pol´shi, Chekhoslovakii, GDR, Vengrii, Bolgarii, Rumynii, po voprosu po sozdanii Vostochnoi laboratorii iadernykh issledovanii [Draft of the letter sent to the leaderships of the Communist Parties of Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, on the establishment of the eastern laboratory for nuclear research],” reproduced in Starchenko, Shimanskaia and Shcherbakova, eds., Istoriia sozdaniia OIIaI v resheniiakh TsK KPSS, 16.

35 Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Mongolia, and North Korea. In September 1956 Vietnam joined the club. In 1965, China, one of the founders of JINR, withdrew its membership.

36 L.F. Zhidkova, Istoriia Dubny : 1956‑1986 [History of Dubna : 1956‑1986] (Dubna, 2006), 42.

37 This was primarily the case for Czechoslovakia, Poland, the DDR and Bulgaria. Interview with Vladimir Nikitin, 01.07.2017, Dubna.

38 According to the first vice‑director of JINR Mariam Danysz, as referenced in the anonymous report of 1956. CERN Archive, DIRADM. PERS/13‑2, File 1.

39 Gary Hausladen even describes Dubna as a “one‑ministry town,” considering that the State Committee for the Utilization of Atomic Energy “had a vested interest in maintaining Dubna as a showplace.” Gary Hausladen, “Planning the Development of the Socialist City : The Case of Dubna New Town,” Geoforum, 18, 1 (1987) : 103–115 (107).

40 See Roman Khandozhko, “Territoriia politicheskoi anomalii : Partiinaia zhizn´ v sovetskom atomnom gorode 1950‑60 godov [Territory of a political anomaly : Party life in a Soviet atomic city in the 1950s‑1960s],” ShAGI/ STEPS, 2, no. 1 (2016) : 167–199.

41 The informal name of the city district dominated by the administrative and residential infrastructure of JINR.

42 Zhidkova, Istoriia Dubny, 77.

43 According to the study “Social Problems of a Small City,” conducted in Dubna by the Institute for Concrete Social Research in 1970/71. ARAN (Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk – Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences), f. 1977, op. 2, d. 44, l. 5. As sociologists noted, “Ties between the populations of the different (institutional and industrial) areas of the city are episodic in nature. The differences in the everyday life of the populations of different city districts are perceived very sharply by public opinion.” Ibid., l. 6.

44 Zhidkova, Istoriia Dubny, 42.

45 Thus, at the Dubna city party conference in 1960, the first director of JINR, Dmitrii Blokhintsev, announced a potential revolutionary breakthrough in technical applications of high‑energy physics knowledge within 20 years – an accurate synchronization with Nikita Khrushchev’s slogan of communism in 20 years. TsAOPIM (Tsentral´nyi arkhiv obshchestvenno‑politicheskoi istorii Moskvy – Central Archive of Socio‑Political History of Moscow), f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 428, l. 37.

46 A meson is a class of composite elementary particles, the study of which was actively conducted at the Dubna facilities throughout the 1950s.

47 Using the terms “atomic imperialism” and “scientific imperialism,” I follow the tradition in imperial studies of analyzing science (including the exact sciences) as a tool of European cultural and political expansion. See : Roy MacLeod, (2000) : “Introduction,” Osiris, 15, Nature and Empire : Science and the Colonial Enterprise (2000) : 1–13 (4–7).

48 The Annual Report of the Dubna City Committee of the CPSU at the 2nd City Party Conference, December 1957. TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 24, l. 10.

49 Gordon Fraser, The Quark Machines : How Europe Fought the Particle Physics War (Bristol : Inst. of Physics Publ., 1997).

50 Gottfried Münzenberg and Matthias Schädel, Moderne Alchemie : Die Jagd nach den schwersten Elementen (Wiesbaden : Vieweg, Teubner Verlag, 1996).

51 Sonja D. Schmid, “Nuclear Colonization ? Soviet Technopolitics in the Second World,” in Gabrielle Hecht, ed., Entangled Geographies. Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press (Inside Technology), 2011), 125–154 (134).

52 The Swedish theorist Gunnar Källén. See “Vsesoiuznoe soveshchanie po kvantovoi ėlektrodinamike i teorii elementarnykh chastits [All‑Union Conference on quantum electrodynamics and theory of elementary particles],” Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, 16, 4 (1955) : 639. The organizers also invited two American physicists, Richard Feynman and Freeman Dyson, but the U.S. authorities did not allow them to attend the meeting. See : David Kaiser, Drawing Theories Apart. The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics (Chicago, IL : The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 161.

53 One of the conference participants, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Moisei Markov, who at that time was working in Dubna, writes in his memoirs about productive informal contacts with leading Western physicists Wolfgang Pauli and Cecil Powell during the conference. See M.A. Markov, Razmyshliaia o fizikakh…, o fizike…, o mire… [Thinking about physicists…, about physics…, about the world…] (M. : Nauka, 1993), 19–20, 29–30. The secret resolution of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU officially ordered the Soviet participants “to establish contact with scientists from other countries participating in this conference and, if possible, to collect characterizing data on them.” Starchenko, Shimanskaia and Shcherbakova, eds., Istoriia sozdaniia OIIaI v resheniiakh TsK KPSS, 5.

54 Fabian Lüscher, “The Nuclear Spirit of Geneva. Boundary‑Crossing Relationships of Soviet Atomic Scientists after 1955,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 66, 1 (2018) : 20–44 (22–23).

55 Krige, “Atoms for Peace,” 179.

56 Igor´ Tamm from the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in physics, and Vladimir Veksler, who headed a laboratory at JINR in Dubna.

57 Robert Eugene Marshak, “The Khrushchev Detente and Emerging Internationalism in Particle Physics,” Physics Today, 43, 1 (1990) : 34–42 (38–40).

58 John Polkinghorne, Rochester Roundabout : The Story of High Energy Physics (New York : W.F. Freeman, 1989), 77.

59 Lüscher, “The Nuclear Spirit of Geneva,” 32.

60 Frank Close, Half‑Life : The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy (New York : Basic Books, 2015).

61 Simone Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair : A Cold War Defection and Nuclear Physics (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2012), 185–198.

62 For example, he is said to have be an inculcator of tennis and scuba diving among Dubna scientists : A.A. Rastorguev, “Dubna 60‑kh : Polden´, XX vek [Dubna of the 60s : Noon, 20th century],” in L.I. Pirogova, ed., Pro zhizn´ : Istoriia Dubny na stranitsakh dubnenskikh SMI [About life : The history of Dubna on the pages of the Dubna media] (Dubna, 2014), 362–366 (363).

63 Although according to memoirs (V.G. Kadyshevskii, A.N. Sisakian and Ts.D. Vylov, eds., Dubna : ostrov stabil´nosti, 19), the first Anglo‑American delegation visited Dubna as early as the fall of 1954, this information has not been confirmed by other sources. The first documented visit of a foreign delegation to “Installation M” in Dubna took place in July 1955 after a session of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the peaceful use of atomic energy, see Starchenko, Shimanskaia and Shcherbakova, eds., Istoriia sozdaniia OIIaI v resheniiakh TsK KPSS, 12–13.

64 It should be mentioned that, at the initial stage, the Ministry of Medium Machine Building did not always readily agree to show Dubna installations to foreigners. In particular, in November 1955, it raised objections to showing the unfinished phasotron of the Electrophysical Laboratory to a delegation of British scientists. See “Zapiska Otdela nauki i vuzov TsK KPSS o vstreche angliiskikh i sovetskikh uchёnykh [Note by the Department of Science and Institutions of Higher Learning of the Central Committee of the CPSU on the Meeting of British and Soviet Scientists],” in Starchenko, Shimanskaia and Shcherbakova, eds., Istoriia sozdaniia OIIaI v resheniiakh TsK KPSS, 17.

65 Victor Weisskopf, Mein Leben : Ein Physiker, Zeitzeuge und Humanist erinnert sich an unser Jahrhundert (Bern – Wien : Scherz Verlag, 1991), 226.

66 For instance, in 1958 the Ministry organized a visit to the Dubna accelerators by foreign participants at the 10th Congress of the International Astronomical Union. At the same time, the idea to demonstrate to the delegates the fast neutron reactor at the Physics and Power Engineering Institute in Obninsk and the IAE thermonuclear installation in Moscow did not meet with support in the defense department of the CPSU Central Committee, “because of the special importance of these works for our country.” See Starchenko, Shimanskaia and Shcherbakova, eds., Istoriia sozdaniia OIIaI v resheniiakh TsK KPSS, 46–48.

67 V.P. Dzhelepov, “Vizit v Dubnu Nil´sa Bora [Nils Bohr’s visit to Dubna],” in E.P. Velikhov, ed., Nauka i obshchestvo : istoriia sovetskogo atomnogo proekta (40‑50 gody). Trudy mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma ISAP‑96. T. 1 [Science and society : History of the Soviet atomic project (40s ‑ 50s)] (M. : IzdAT, 1997), 475–477. At that moment, Dubna had already established relationships with Copenhagen and sent its first scientist (Solov’ёv) for a research stay in 1960. TsAOPIM, f. P‑7915, op. 1, d. 1, l. 52 (ob.).

68 CERN Archive, WOL‑071 ; “Postanovlenie Sekretariata TsK KPSS ‘O priglashenii v SSSR sotrudnika Laboratorii Kiuri’ [Decree of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU ‘On the invitation of a researcher from the Curie laboratory to the USSR’],” reproduced in Starchenko, Shimanskaia and Shcherbakova, eds., Istoriia sozdaniia OIIaI v resheniiakh TsK KPSS, 23.

69 I.G. Zarubina, ed., Akademik A.M. Baldin. K 75‑letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia [Academician A.M. Baldin. On the occasion of his 75th birthday] (Dubna : OIIaI, 2009), 10 ; Rudolf Peierls, Bird of Passage : Recollections of a Physicist (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1985), 239.

70 William Owen Lock, “Collaboration CERN‑JINR (Dubna) and CERN‑USSR 1955‑1975,” Europhysics News, 6, 7 (1975), 1–4 (1).

71 As stated in an anonymous report by a Hungarian refugee who spent three months in Dubna during 1956, Danysz “hated Russians” and did not want to accept his post at JINR, “but was forced to do so by academic pressure.” CERN Archive, DIRADM. PERS/13‑2, file 1.

72 F.C. Frank and D.H. Perkins, “Cecil Frank Powell. 1903–1969,” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 17 (1971) : 541–563 (551–554). As early as in September 1955, Powell travelled to Moscow and successfully promoted joint work by the Soviet, Western and Eastern European scientists on the emulsion packages he exposed to the cosmic rays in his laboratory in the Italian Alps. See Thomas Stange, “How European physics reached across the Wall” (2002). https://cerncourier.com/how‑european‑physics‑reached‑across‑the‑wall/, last visited 03.01.2020.

73 Weisskopf, Mein Leben, 29, 66–73.

74 CERN Archive, CM‑P00075968‑e, p. 16.

75 CERN Archive, CM‑P00076665‑e, p. 10.

76 Visit to Moscow, 31 May to 7 June, 1960. Notes by J.B. Adams [Draft]. CERN Archive, JBA‑179.

77 Lock, “Collaboration CERN‑JINR (Dubna) and CERN‑USSR 1955‑1975,” 1.

78 A.A. Rastorguev, “Kontaktov ne izbezhat´ [Contacts cannot be avoided]” (2010), https://www.proza.ru/2010/02/08/632, last visited 02.01.2020.

79 Lock, “Collaboration CERN‑JINR (Dubna) and CERN‑USSR 1955‑1975,” 1.

80 A.A. Rastorguev, “Govorun i ego komanda [Govorun and his team],” in B.M. Starchenko, ed., OIIaI. Vremia, sobytiia, liudi (Dubna : Feniks+, 2016), 216.

81 A. Bertelo and R.M. Sulyaev, “Puzyr´kovaia kamera “Mirabel´” na Serpukhovskom uskoritele [Mirabelle bubble chamber at the Serpukhov accelerator],” Atomnaia energiia, 32, 5 (1972) : 371–378. A significant number of employees of the Laboratory of High Energy Physics, JINR, worked on the creation of a record accelerator, launched in Serpukhov in 1967. Some of them were subsequently employed there at the new Institute of High Energy Physics.

82 Adrienne Kolb and Lillian Hoddeson, “The Mirage of the “World Accelerator for World Peace” and the Origins of the SSC, 1953–1983,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 24, 1 (1993) : 101–124 (104–106).

83 CERN Archive, JBA‑76.

84 Vitaly S. Pronskikh, “E‑36 : The First Proto‑Megascience Experiment at NAL,” Physics in Perspective, 18, 4 (2016) : 357–378 (363).

85 Interview with Vladimir Nikitin, 01.07.2017, Dubna.

86 CERN Archive, JBA‑128.

87 Cited by : CERN Archive, DIRADM/21, File 2.

88 The Helsinki Final Act, reproduced in : John Fry, The Helsinki Process : Negotiating Security and Cooperation in Europe (Washington, DC : National Defense University Press, 1993), 213.

89 Pronskikh, “E‑36,” 357.

90 Ibid., 370.

91 Interview with Vladimir Nikitin, 01.07.2017, Dubna.

92 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 151, l. 33. According to the observation of the Czech physicist Franz Lehar, “it was easier for foreigners from JINR to attend a conference in the West.” Franz Legar, Skazki o zolotoi kletke [Tales of the golden cage] (Dubna : OIIaI, 1997), 15.

93 The standard version of this procedure is described in Maria Rogacheva, The Private World of Soviet Scientists from Stalin to Gorbachev (New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2017), 161–164.

94 Rastorguev, “Proekt ‘OIIaI’.”

95 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 29, l. 69.

96 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 4, l. 306.

97 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 4, l. 308.

98 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 6, l. 33.

99 By 1961 Danysz had already left Dubna. TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 6, l. 33.

100 CERN Archive, DIRADM. PERS/13‑2, File 1.

101 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 4, d. 8, l. 62.

102 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 4, d. 8, l. 43.

103 Arkhivnyi otdel Administratsii Dubny – Archival Division of the Dubna Administration, f. 1, op. 1, d. 23, l. 15. Protokol dated 18.12.1958.

104 Legar, Skazki o zolotoi kletke, 35.

105 Ibid., 36.

106 Ibid.

107 Mary K. Gaillard, A Singularly Unfeminine Profession : One Woman’s Journey in Physics (New Jersey : World Scientific, 2015), 75.

108 F. Calogero, “Remembering Yakov Abramovich Smorodinsky,” in M. Shifman, ed., Under the Spell of Landau : When Theoretical Physics Was Shaping Destinies (Singapore, Hackensack, N.J : World Scientific, 2013), 178–180.

109 Legar, Skazki o zolotoi kletke, 6.

110 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 4, d. 3, l. 37.

111 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 24, l. 40.

112 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 4, d. 3, l. 13.

113 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 293, l. 6‑7.

114 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 4, d. 3, l. 13.

115 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 4, d. 7, l. 63.

116 Sergei Polikanov, Razryv : Zapiski atomnogo fizika [The break. Notes of an atomic physicist] (Frankfurt‑na‑Maine : Posev, 1983), 116 ; Legar, Skazki o zolotoi kletke, 16.

117 John Wilson Lewis and Litai Xue, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1988), 61–65.

118 In 1960, out of a total of 200 foreign specialists at JINR, 65 were Chinese. See K.S. Medved´ and S.V. Medved´, “Ob izgotovlenii bumazhnykh tigrov. Uchastie SSSR v kitaiskoi iadernoi programme, 1955–1960 [On the manufacture of paper tigers. Participation of the USSR in the Chinese nuclear program, 1955–1960],” in E.P. Velikhov, ed., Nauka i obshchestvo : istoriia sovetskogo atomnogo proekta (40‑50 gody). Trudy mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma ISAP‑96. T. 3 [Science and society : The history of the Soviet atomic project (40s ‑ 50s)] (M. : IzdAT, 2003), 258.

119 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 5, d. 3, l. 42.

120 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 434, l. 89.

121 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 5, d. 3, l. 43.

122 Zhu Hong‑Yuan, talk delivered at the 12th Session of the JINR Scientific Council, May 31, 1965. Referenced in Pronskikh, “E‑36,” 361.

123 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 4, l. 306. The sexual relations between Soviet female employees of the institute and representatives of other participating countries are repeatedly mentioned in party documents : TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 6, l. 16, 34.

124 Heinz und Elfi Barwich, Das rote Atom : Als deutscher Wissenschaftler im Geheimkreis der russischen Kernphysik (München, Bern : Scherz Verlag, 1967), 200.

125 Tataina Strokovskaya, “Experience of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research as an Example of International Scientific Cooperation in the Frame of Sustainable Development,” International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Sciences, 5, 5 (2017) : 246–250 (248).

126 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 1, d. 293, l. 6.

127 On “Berezka shops” see : A.A. Ivanova, Magaziny “Berëzka”. Paradoksy potrebleniia v pozdnem SSSR [Berezka shops : Paradoxes of consumption in the late Soviet Union] (M. : Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2017).

128 R. Brandt, “Visit to Dubna July – September 1966.” CERN Archive, DIRADM. PERS/13‑2‑FILE 2.

129 TsAOPIM, f. P‑7680, op. 2, d. 4, l. 31–33.

130 E.D. Fediun´kin, “Ave, Caesar !” Insait, no. 1 (1989) : 48–49.

131 Barwich, Das rote Atom, 244–248.

132 Legar, Skazki o zolotoi kletke, 15.

133 Polikanov, Razryv, 157.

134 Lillian Hoddeson, Adrienne W. Kolb, and Catherine Westfall, in their book on the history of Fermilab in the US, define “megascience” as a new modus in the organization of science which started to replace the old “big science” paradigm in the 1970s. The “megascience” model incorporated the large machines, research groups, and budgets that defined big science, while also featuring a new distinguishing element – large‑scale international collaborations. Lillian Hoddeson, Adrienne W. Kolb and Catherine Westfall, Fermilab : Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2008), 1–3.

135 Baneke, “The Absence of the East,” 175.

136 This mechanism was obvious to the scientists themselves, as follows from the following anecdote : “According to a member of the congressional Joint Committee who talked to a Soviet physicist at Dubna : ‘The Dubna Laboratory asked our group when we were there 2 years ago how we got the money to build our accelerators. We told them the legislative process of getting money on our program. He said, ‘That is not the way I understand.’ He said, ‘I understand you get it by saying the Russians have a 10 million electronvolt synchrotron and we need a 20 billion electron [volt] synchrotron and that is how you get your money.’ I said, ‘There may be something to it.’ I said, ‘How do you get your money ?’ He said, ‘The same way.’” Peter J. Westwick, The National Labs : Science in an American System, 1947–1974 (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2003), 168–169.

137 The first version of the name of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, proposed by Igor´ Kurchatov.

138 Loren M. Graham, “Big Science in the Last Years of the Big Soviet Union,” Osiris, 7, 40 (1992) : 49–71 (51).

139 David‑Fox, “The Iron Curtain as Semipermeable Membrane.”

140 Péteri, “Nylon Curtain.”

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References

Bibliographical reference

Roman Khandozhko, “Quantum Tunneling through the Iron Curtain”Cahiers du monde russe, 60/2-3 | 2019, 369-396.

Electronic reference

Roman Khandozhko, “Quantum Tunneling through the Iron Curtain”Cahiers du monde russe [Online], 60/2-3 | 2019, Online since 01 January 2023, connection on 29 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/monderusse/11222; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/monderusse.11222

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About the author

Roman Khandozhko

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow, ro.khan.man@gmail.com

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