All Aboard the Akademik Knipovich: Soviet Fisheries Research, International Organizations, and the Cold War of the Sea

• In Event: Soviet and Post-Soviet Histories of Fishing: Environments and Knowledge between the Local and Global

Abstract

This paper explores how, in the 1960s and 1970s, Soviet research vessles were used by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) as innovative sites for training courses in fisheries techniques offered to officials and scientists from the developing world. These tours on board active vessels allowed FAO and Soviet officials to work together to find new species and commerical fishing grounds, and to share knowledge that would improve the efficiency of fishing globally, while increasing enivronmental destruction, even though USSR never joined the FAO. Based on materials from the FAO archives, the paper centers on the discoveries made during a series of tours held on the Akademik Knipovich in the Mediterranean Sea, and one consequential 1968 visit by the vessel’s experts to the FAO’s headquarters in Rome. The Soviet and international fishing knowledge created and put into use on the Akademik Knipovich, like other instances of Soviet-FAO cooperation, can help us understsand the enivironmental politics of the cold war in the sea.

Author

• Elizabeth Banks, U of Edinburgh (UK)