A Matter of Courtesy: The Role of Soviet Diplomacy and Soviet “System Safeguards” in Maintaining Soviet Influence on Czechoslovak Science before and after 1968
Abstract
In 1969, a few short months after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Sergei I. Prasolov, advisor to the Soviet Ambassador in Prague, informed František Šorm, President of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, at a formal meeting that he welcomed Šorm's suggestion to intensify scientific exchange between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Šorm politely declined this offer. Behind the veneer of diplomatic courtesy on the part of both actors, a real drama was taking place. Šorm and the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences had actually never formulated such a request. To the contrary, since the late 1950s the academy had repeatedly pointed out that the Soviets were incapable of coordinating scientific activities in the Eastern Bloc. The Soviet system of academic cooperation within the Eastern Bloc had already begun to collapse after the Geneva Summit of 1955, where the Soviets opened the door to international collaboration across the Iron Curtain. Yet it was only in the late 1960s that the Soviets realized that while they dominated large‐scale international collaboration, they had lost control of internal developments within the Eastern Bloc.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bewi.202000023?af=R
The Meaning of Deviation in the Early Modern Evolution of Knowledge Management Systems: A Response to Richard Yeo
Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 43, Issue 4, Page 606-614, December 2020.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bewi.202000025?af=R
The Unflinching Mr. Smith and the Nuclear Age**
Abstract
This article focuses on the U.S. diplomat and nuclear arms control negotiator Gerald (Gerry) Coat Smith in order to cast new light on the importance of diplomats in the context of the set of international activities currently labelled as “science diplomacy.” Smith, a lawyer by training, was a key negotiator in many international agreements on post‐WW2 atomic energy projects, from those on uranium prospecting and mining, to reactors technologies to later ones on non‐proliferation and disarmament. His career in science (nuclear) diplomacy also epitomized the shortcomings of efforts to align other countries’ posture on nuclear affairs to U.S. wishes. In particular, the unswerving diplomat increasingly understood that strong‐arm tactics to dissuade other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons would not limit proliferation. Not only did this inform later U.S. diplomacy approaches, but it lent itself to the ascendancy of the new notion of “soft power” as critical to the re‐definition of international affairs.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bewi.202000019?af=R