Martin Bemmann (Freiburg): On the Way to International Scientific Institutes? CMEA’s Coordination Centres and the Infrastructures of Knowledge in the Socialist World, 1960s to 1980s

Wir laden Sie herzlich zu unserer nächsten Kolloquiumsveranstaltung mit Martin Bemmann am 12. Dezember 2024 ein. Martin Bemmann wird einen Vortrag zu On the Way to International Scientific Institutes? CMEA’s Coordination Centres and the Infrastructures of Knowledge in the Socialist World, 1960s to 1980s halten. Für mehr Informationen zu den Inhalten des Vortrages siehe das Abstract unten.

Die Veranstaltung findet in Kooperation mit der Professur für Neuere und Osteuropäische Geschichte von 18:15–19:45 Uhr in Raum 4429 (KG IV) statt. 

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On the Way to International Scientific Institutes? CMEA’s Coordination Centres and the Infrastructures of Knowledge in the Socialist World, 1960s to 1980s 

Focussing on multilateral research collaboration within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), the paper introduces a rather unknown, but wide field of activities of this international organization of Socialist states. It proposes reasons why this collaboration was not as successful as its initiators had thought and it highlights two aspects why it is still worthwhile to explore it. First, the paper argues that research collaboration triggered the emergence of “infrastructures of knowledge”, comprising of institutional and personal networks that partly reached beyond the Iron Curtain and that in some cases outlived the political meltdown of the Socialist world in 1989/90. Second, it reveals that individuals and states used research collaboration as a political means to widen their respective rooms for manoeuvre – within their own countries, against Soviet dominance and for strengthening Socialist expertise in Europe and the world.