Shattered Earth and Trembling Peace: the Globalization of Seismology during the Cold War, 1958-1990s

• In Event: Globalizing the Soviet Environment: East-West Circulations of Knowledge and Expertise on Nature, 1957-1991

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 1960s seismologist on both sides of the Iron Curtain played a significant role in the rapprochement between East and West due primarily to the demands of the nuclear test ban treaty (1963). The paper examines how on the one hand under the conditions of the Cold War the struggle for superiority impacted the Soviet Union’s preparedness for earthquakes and yet, on the other hand, natural disasters of this kind helped to generate an East-West collaboration in the field of seismology. Based on archival material from Moscow, Yerevan as well as Geneva and interviews with former Soviet seismologists, this paper will shed new light on the potentials of a hitherto neglected academic discipline, which proved influential for both the maintenance and the cessation of the Cold War.

Author

• Katja Doose, U of Tübingen (Germany)