International Geophysical Year as Part of the Soviet Science Diplomacy during the Cold War

This research paper is devoted to the study of the science diplomacy and international cooperation between scientists during the IGY – International Geophysical Year, which was a complex and a large scale project in the area of natural sciences and lasted eighteen months from July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958, when thousands of scientists from 67 countries from around the world joined forces to conduct geophysical research and collect global data in oceanography, meteorology, seismology, etc. International Geophysical Year has contributed significantly to the development of science on oceans during the confrontation and was one of the most important attempts to make scientific cooperation and exchange of information more open and ambitious, and has once again confirmed the need to coordinate the work of various countries in ocean researches. Cooperation during the IGY enabled scientists to exchange scientific data, as well as the opportunity to complete some projects that individual national research groups could not be able complete on their own, without financial support. At the same time, the IGY was part of the scientific and technological race between capitalist and socialist blocs and has been used as an arena for the propaganda of achievements. The purpose of this research was to understand how Soviet scientists maintained relationship with foreign colleagues and to analyze the difficulties they faced at different levels. This study focuses on archival materials from the Russian Academy of Sciences, including letters and reports of soviet scientists; interviews with soviet and american scientists, recorded by the American Institute of Physics in the 1990s; articles from newspapers and scientific journals dedicated to the International Geophysical Year.