The Land of Tomorrow: Exporting Scientific Siberia to the United States (1975)

• In Event: Left Perspectives on State Socialism II: The USSR and the Creation of Cold War International Spaces

Abstract

“Life, Science, and Nature” were the three key words of the Soviet exhibition “Siberia Scientific,” touring the United States for about six months in 1975-1976. The show was conceived and perceived as a Soviet one: a disclaimer placed at both entrances to the Smithsonian stated that the exhibition was the work of the Soviet Academy of Science and its Siberian Branch and expressed the pleasure of the institution and the state department to be hosting this Soviet view of Siberia. A display of the Soviet perspective on Siberian life, science and nature quite literally framed by the Cold War, “Siberia Scientific” thus presents a rich historical case for exploring the politics of science framing both the competition and the efforts at collaboration between the two superpowers. Building on the scholarship devoted to American exhibits, I study the exhibit as a visual and discursive assemblage providing an analytical magnifying glass that reveals how Siberia was defined as a territory in relation to science. I argue that the problematic relation to reality, the “hyperreality” of the display, should not be downplayed as propaganda but analyzed as showcasing, that is, a media for realignment of technological, environmental, and knowledge orders associated with Siberia. The exhibit offered a vision of the rational development of the productive forces in Siberia as the guarantor of the future socialist plenty, a vision illustrating a lager set of preoccupations connecting science policy to political economy that were circulating in the late Soviet Union.

Author

• Ksenia Tatarchenko, Singapore Management U (Singapore)