Science and Politics in the Soviet Space Program, the Example of Soviet-Swedish Collaboration, 1965-1975s

In the aftermath of World War II, Soviet leadership started actively developing wide-range ballistic rocket technologies. This, firstly military intension, had eventually resulted in the competition with USA in 1960-1970s, so called, Space race. Although, the earliest steps of Soviet space program, wasn’t of a high importance, since the space boom has appeared and the satellites’ launches have become the banner of the mankind’s future, Soviets made their best to be its bearer. Along with big and famous rocket launches, which were apparently functioning as a steam valve during the Cold War, there were also little shifts towards scientific collaborations between USSR and capitalist countries, especially in terms of small semi-official space launches. The function of those collaboration precedents in the context of the Cold War is still vague. One of the examples of such collaborations is the case of Soviet-Swedish launch from the cosmodrome space center Kapustin Yar in 1975. This launch was the result of a long academic and scientific coordination. Apart from the rocket launch, in 1976 a Soviet-Sweden balloon campaign took place. The campaign involved launching of balloons carrying scientific devices from Estrange rocket base in northern Sweden. The reasons for closing in were official agreements between academies of sciences, diplomatic visits from both sides and many informal meetings. The nature of Soviet-Swedish collaboration and, especially, the way it was seen in the USSR is a poorly understood chapter in the history of the Cold War science. This case potentially gives an understanding of the Soviet science diplomacy and the role of scientists and engineers in it, as well as an understanding the role of the Sweden in the Cold War science politics in general. Space collaboration gave the way towards more broad international cooperation with the Sweden and maintained the neutrality of the latter. Thus, this precedent is also an important example of how space race was accumulating the tensions of the, so called, bipolar world, and how it, eventually, got refracted in it. Soviet-Swedish collaboration intertwined the Cold War imperatives, along with technology transfers and the issues of decision-making process in Soviet diplomacy.