The Soviet Union in Antarctica during the Cold War

PhD project by Elias Angele

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Susanne Schattenberg

Antarctica was the Earth’s last continent to be settled permanently during the Cold War. Starting with the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in the 1950s, several countries established national research bases in order to map the territory, evaluate potential resources, and understand the intricate processes of an ecosystem which heavily impacts global weather formation and the Earth system as a whole. Since then, scientists from all over the world have formed Antarctica’s temporary population. Among the countries eager to make use of what was to be found there was the Soviet Union, the one socialist state in the Antarctic club.

This dissertation examines the participation of the USSR in Antarctic research. It investigates the role of scientists as well as diplomats in the creation of the continent as a giant Cold War laboratory where the superpowers were forced to cooperate, in contrast to much of the rest of the globe. In parallel to large-scale scientific endeavors such as the IGY, the foreign ministries of the countries active in Antarctica tried to reach an agreement that would solve the quandary of conflicting interests in the area. The negotiations ultimately produced the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, which legally established free international knowledge exchange as one of its core principles. Decades of exchange of scientific personnel between the superpowers followed and the Antarctic continent became a remarkable zone of contact, where scientists were able to live with the ideological enemy for an extended period. This, and the fact that – to some degree – international cooperation in Antarctica is present today, has occasionally led to the conclusion that Antarctica was a continent untouched by the Cold War.

Through extensive research in American, British, German, and Russian archives, this work uncovers the Soviet influence that shaped the Antarctic knowledge regime. It is argued here that, contrary to the aforementioned narrative, scientific exchange programs both enabled trans-systemic knowledge exchange and fostered inter-systemic rivalries. It will be argued that this was mainly due to two reasons. Firstly, the harsh environment of the icy continent made it virtually impossible for a single nation state to analyze its complex dynamics and use this knowledge for its advantage alone. Secondly, the remoteness of Antarctica made it easier to both experiment with new policy models and control the actors involved more efficiently. And finally, archival evidence shows that Soviet research in the Antarctic was not as open as outsiders were made to believe.

By taking a closer look at the diplomacy, the organizational structures and the individual scientists that helped create and sustain a multi-layered knowledge regime in Antarctica, this project will contribute to a deeper understanding of Soviet science diplomacy, cultural exchange and the environmental history of the Cold War.