Soviet Science And Engineering In The Shadow Of The Cold War

Download or read book Soviet Science and Engineering in the Shadow of the Cold War written by Hiroshi Ichikawa and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1950s were a vital time in the history of science. In accordance with the intensification of the Cold War, many scientific talents were mobilized to several military-related research and development projects not only in the United States, but also in the Soviet Union. Contrary to the expectation of General Leslie Groves, a leader of the Manhattan Project, the Soviet Union succeeded in their nuclear weapon development in a very short time. And then, by the end of the decade, mankind reached the dawn of the Atomic Age proper with the beginning of the operation of the world’s first civil nuclear power plant in Obninsk in 1954. The risky and costly developments of new weapons such as rockets, jet warplanes, and computers were achieved by the Soviet Union in a very short time after World War II in spite of the heavy economic damage caused by the battles with German troops in Soviet territory. Why were such a great number of scientific talents mobilized to various Soviet Cold War research and development projects? What were the true natures, and real consequences of the rushed Cold War projects? How did Soviet scientists approach the nuclear age? Thanks to the study of formerly classified Soviet archives, a more nuanced view of Soviet society has become possible. To resolve the above-mentioned questions, Ichikawa analyses the complicated interactions among various factors, including the indigenous contradictions in the historical development of science in the Soviet Union; conflicts among the related interest groups; relationships with the political leadership and the military, the role of ideology and others.

Download or read book In the Shadow of the Garrison State written by Aaron L. Friedberg and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-06 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War--or the threat of war--usually strengthens states as governments tax, draft soldiers, exert control over industrial production, and dampen internal dissent in order to build military might. The United States, however, was founded on the suspicion of state power, a suspicion that continued to gird its institutional architecture and inform the sentiments of many of its politicians and citizens through the twentieth century. In this comprehensive rethinking of postwar political history, Aaron Friedberg convincingly argues that such anti-statist inclinations prevented Cold War anxieties from transforming the United States into the garrison state it might have become in their absence. Drawing on an array of primary and secondary sources, including newly available archival materials, Friedberg concludes that the "weakness" of the American state served as a profound source of national strength that allowed the United States to outperform and outlast its supremely centralized and statist rival: the Soviet Union. Friedberg's analysis of the U. S. government's approach to taxation, conscription, industrial planning, scientific research and development, and armaments manufacturing reveals that the American state did expand during the early Cold War period. But domestic constraints on its expansion--including those stemming from mean self-interest as well as those guided by a principled belief in the virtues of limiting federal power--protected economic vitality, technological superiority, and public support for Cold War activities. The strategic synthesis that emerged by the early 1960s was functional as well as stable, enabling the United States to deter, contain, and ultimately outlive the Soviet Union precisely because the American state did not limit unduly the political, personal, and economic freedom of its citizens. Political scientists, historians, and general readers interested in Cold War history will value this thoroughly researched volume. Friedberg's insightful scholarship will also inspire future policy by contributing to our understanding of how liberal democracy's inherent qualities nurture its survival and spread.

Download or read book Scientists in the Classroom written by J. Rudolph and published by Springer. This book was released on 2002-05-02 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1950s, leading American scientists embarked on an unprecedented project to remake high school science education. Dissatisfaction with the 'soft' school curriculum of the time advocated by the professional education establishment, and concern over the growing technological sophistication of the Soviet Union, led government officials to encourage a handful of elite research scientists, fresh from their World War II successes, to revitalize the nations' science curricula. In Scientists in the Classroom , John L. Rudolph argues that the Cold War environment, long neglected in the history of education literature, is crucial to understanding both the reasons for the public acceptance of scientific authority in the field of education and the nature of the curriculum materials that were eventually produced. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped resources from government and university archives, Rudolph focuses on the National Science Foundation-supported curriculum projects initiated in 1956. What the historical record reveals, according to Rudolph, is that these materials were designed not just to improve American science education, but to advance the professional interest of the American scientific community in the postwar period as well.

Download or read book Foreign Aid and Journalism in the Global South written by Jairo Lugo-Ocando and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreign Aid and Journalism in the Global South: A Mouthpiece for Truth examines the way in which foreign aid has shaped professional ideologies of journalism as part of systematic and orchestrated efforts since the beginning of the twentieth century to shape journalism as a political institution of the Global South. Foreign aid pushed for cultural convergence around a set of ideologies as a way of exporting ideology and expanding markets, reflecting the market society along with the expansion of U.S. power and culture across the globe. Jairo Lugo-Ocando argues that these policies were not confined to the Cold War and were not a purely modern phenomenon; today’s journalism grammar was not invented in one place and spread to the rest, but was instead a forced colonial and post-colonial nation-building exercise that reflected both imposition and contestation to these attempts. As a result, Lugo-Ocando claims, journalism grammar and ideology differ between societies in the Global South, regardless of claims of universality. Scholars of journalism, international relations, Latin American Studies, and history will find this book particularly useful.

Download or read book Science, Technology and the Cultural Cold War in Asia written by Yuka Moriguchi Tsuchiya and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tsuchiya presents a new insight into the political roles of science and technology during the Cold War era in Asia. The Cold War was not only a battle of conflicting ideologies and economic systems, but also a competition of cultures and lifestyles, and a battle to win the hearts and minds of people in developing countries. Tsuchiya argues that science and technology were an integral part of how culture was deployed strategically. She discusses the 1950s and early 1960s: the Eisenhower and Kennedy presidencies in the U.S., and the decolonization and nation-building efforts in Japan, South Vietnam, Burma, and Indonesia. She also sheds light on the way U.S. technological aid programs such as Foreign Atoms for Peace, and the overseas information program were received by Asian leaders, technocrats, and scientists. Provides valuable insight for scholars of Cold War History in Asia and US Foreign Policy.

Download or read book In the Shadow of the Bomb written by S. S. Schweber and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How two charismatic, exceptionally talented physicists came to terms with the nuclear weapons they helped to create In 1945, the United States dropped the bomb, and physicists were forced to contemplate disquieting questions about their roles and responsibilities. When the Cold War followed, they were confronted with political demands for their loyalty and McCarthyism's threats to academic freedom. By examining how J. Robert Oppenheimer and Hans A. Bethe—two men with similar backgrounds but divergent aspirations and characters—struggled with these moral dilemmas, one of our foremost historians of physics tells the story of modern physics, the development of atomic weapons, and the Cold War. Oppenheimer and Bethe led parallel lives. Both received liberal educations that emphasized moral as well as intellectual growth. Both were outstanding theoreticians who worked on the atom bomb at Los Alamos. Both advised the government on nuclear issues, and both resisted the development of the hydrogen bomb. Both were, in their youth, sympathetic to liberal causes, and both were later called to defend the United States against Soviet communism and colleagues against anti-Communist crusaders. Finally, both prized scientific community as a salve to the apparent failure of Enlightenment values. Yet their responses to the use of the atom bomb, the testing of the hydrogen bomb, and the treachery of domestic politics differed markedly. Bethe, who drew confidence from scientific achievement and integration into the physics community, preserved a deep integrity. By accepting a modest role, he continued to influence policy and contributed to the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963. In contrast, Oppenheimer first embodied a new scientific persona—the scientist who creates knowledge and technology affecting all humanity and boldly addresses their impact—and then could not carry its burden. His desire to retain insider status, combined with his isolation from creative work and collegial scientific community, led him to compromise principles and, ironically, to lose prestige and fall victim to other insiders. S. S. Schweber draws on his vast knowledge of science and its history—in addition to his unique access to the personalities involved—to tell a tale of two men that will enthrall readers interested in science, history, and the lives and minds of great thinkers.

Download or read book Technologies of Mind and Body in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc written by Claire Shaw and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-11-16 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The project to create a 'New Man' and 'New Woman' initiated in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc constituted one of the most extensive efforts to remake human psychophysiology in modern history. Playing on the different meanings of the word 'technology' - as practice, knowledge and artefact - this edited volume brings together scholarship from across a range of fields to shed light on the ways in which socialist regimes in the Soviet bloc and Eastern Europe sought to transform and revolutionise human capacities. From external, state-driven techniques of social control and bodily management, through institutional practices of transformation, to strategies of self-fashioning, Technologies of Mind and Body in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc probes how individuals and collectives engaged with - or resisted - the transformative imperatives of the Soviet experiment. The volume's broad scope covers topics including the theory and practice of revolutionary embodiment; the practice of expert knowledge and disciplinary power in psychotherapy and criminology; the representation and transformation of ideal bodies through mass media and culture; and the place of disabled bodies in the context of socialist transformational experiments. The book brings the history of human 're-making' and the history of Soviet and Eastern Bloc socialism into conversation in a way that will have broad and lasting resonance.