Simon Schulz, M.A.

 

Simon Schulz

Department of History

Eastern European History

Room 304

Grabengasse 3-5

69117 Heidelberg

Germany

 

 

 

 

 

 

This question was asked by the Soviet geophysicist Evgenij Konstantinovič Fėdorov in an article for the USSR's leading newspaper Pravda in 1957. While today's readers will wonder about such lines coming from an internationally highly recognized scientist, for readers in the 1950s this outlook may have appeared perfectly plausible and reasonable. In the days of the Cold War's nuclear arms and space races, breathtaking scientific breakthroughs in various disciplines seemed possible, including the field of "weather modification". Scientists in numerous countries, especially in the United States and the Soviet Union, studied atmospheric processes in order to increase rainfall, supress hail or gain even more comprehensive "control over the weather".

 

In my dissertation project, I study the Soviet history of this weather modification by approaching the USSR's research on "active influence on metereological processes" during the Cold War through the lens of entangled history. Rather than looking at the research institutions at the 'centre' in Moscow and Leningrad in the frame of the nation state, I focus on regional scientific fieldwork and transnational circulations of knowledge, techniques and people. My research therefore draws on case studies from former Soviet Republics and Western countries alike to trace the entanglements within the Soviet Union and across the Iron Curtain that shaped Soviet research on weather modification. By doing so, my dissertation project contributes to the ongoing reorientation of the field of Eastern European and Eurasian history towards a 'decentralized' understanding of Soviet history, as well as to the field of the history of science in its efforts to overcome its primary focus on American and Western European history.