Science, (Anti-)Communism and Diplomacy

From 1957 onwards, the Pugwash Conferences brought together elite scientists from across ideological and political divides to work towards disarmament. Through a series of national case studies - Austria, China, Czechoslovakia, East and West Germany, the US and USSR - this volume offers a critical reassessment of the development and work of "Pugwash" nationally, internationally, and as a transnational forum for Track II diplomacy. This major new collection of work reveals the difficulties that Pugwash scientists encountered as they sought to reach across the blocs, create a channel for East-West dialogue and realize on the project's founding aim of influencing state actors. Uniquely, the book affords a sense of the contingent and contested process by which the network-like organization took shape around the conferences.



Contributors are Gordon Barrett, Matthew Evangelista, Silke Fengler, Alison Kraft, Fabian L scher, Doubravka Ols kov , Geoffrey Roberts, Paul Rubinson, and Carola Sachse.