Geophysical Collaboration under the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Environmental Agreement of 1972: Peaceful Coexistence, Collaborative Circles, and Friendship Dynamics

When the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection was signed in 1972, the two nations had limited previous experience in joint scientific work in earth sciences outside the International Geophysical Year. Constraints in communication, scarce access to data and publications, and national security challenges of joint geophysical research inhibited scientific dialogue. While global circulations of scientific knowledge never truly ceased, professional ties between American and Soviet core-level science practitioners of two post-WWII generations had to be (re)invented in a new setting. The political détente and the environmental agreement created a necessity to develop channels and strategies of communication that had to differ even from the previous U.S.–U.S.S.R. scientific and student exchanges in the 1950s-1960s. Now American and Soviet scientists were to face each other in informal settings without an established protocol of interaction, in the lab and field, in real time. This paper explores the ways in which non-trivial real-life experiences (relocation, cohabitation and survival in the field, and exposure to different intellectual, aesthetic, and everyday cultures) shaped the relationships between American and Soviet core-level geoscientists, who participated in joint projects in seismology, paleoclimatology, and atmospheric studies under the 1972 agreement. Tracing the creation and dynamics of collaborative practices in these bilateral circles through the stories of participants, as told by themselves in interviews, their personal papers, institutional records, and popular press, offers an additional layer of understanding how exchange, sharing, and co-creation of scientific knowledge was made possible and consistent through personal connections.