Soviet Science as Cultural Diplomacy during the Tbilisi Conference on General Relativity

Abstract

Scientific research — in particular, military and nuclear — had proven during the Second World War to have the potential to demonstrate the superiority of a country. Then, its internationalization in the post-war period led to its being considered a key element of cultural diplomacy. In 1968, during the organization of a conference on general relativity and gravitation in Tbilisi, geopolitics and science encountered abruptly. As a consequence of the Third Arab-Israeli War between Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in June 1967, diplomatic relations between the USSR and Israel were interrupted. Then, Israeli physicists initially were not invited to join their colleagues in Georgia. Such a political decision provoked a tense crisis that afterwards would affect the institutional organization of the scientific community dealing with the theory of relativity. The present article proposes to examine this episode of the history of science as part of the history of Soviet cultural diplomacy. Indeed, focusing on Soviet actors of the Israeli crisis in 1968, it is possible to better understand the political influences on scientists in the USSR. In this context, of particular interest is the international trajectory of the Head of the local organizing committee of the Tbilisi conference, Vladimir A. Fock. From his example, it is shown in the article that Soviet scientists primarily acted as representatives at the international level and were restricted in their movement. Their actions were under control of their scientific and political authorities.