Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T23:39:42.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Scientific Community in a Divided World: Economists, Planning, and Research Priority during the Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2008

Johanna Bockman  and
Michael A. Bernstein
Johanna Bockman
Affiliation:
George Mason University
Michael A. Bernstein
Affiliation:
Tulane University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the Cold War, economists utilizing mathematical methods in both the Soviet Union and the United States found they shared a common research project. After the Stalinist years in which they could communicate very little, they found that they had much to learn from each other. Mathematical economics came to bridge the divide between East and West even though the meetings and collaborations between American and Soviet colleagues were fraught with tension and misunderstanding. The Cold War excitement about mathematical economics and the East-West cooperation it allowed, however, dwindled with the end of détente, the global shift in economic science away from mathematical economics, and the end of state socialism in the East Bloc. To understand the rise and fall of this cooperation and convergence, we examine the case of the connection between Tjalling C. Koopmans, a Dutch economist living in the United States as a result of World War II, and Leonid V. Kantorovich, a Russian scientist living in the Soviet Union. These two men jointly won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1975. Their scientific connections reflect the broader experiences of East-West scientific collaboration during the Cold War. At the same time, they offer insights for scholars regarding struggles over scientific research priority and the potential for convergence between capitalism and socialism during the Cold War era.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 581 - 613
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amadae, S. M. 2003. Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. 1969. The Task of the Translator. In, Arendt, Hannah, ed., Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, 69–82.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Michael. 2001. A Perilous Progress: Economists and Public Purpose in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bockman, Johanna K. 2000. Economists and Social Change: Science, Professional Power, and Politics in Hungary, 1945–1995. Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego, Dept. of Sociology.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brannigan, Augustine and Wanner, Richard A.. 1983. Multiple Discoveries in Science: A Test of the Communication Theory. Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 8, 2: 135–51.Google Scholar
Brooks, Harvey and McDonald, Alan. 2000. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the TAP Project, and the RAINS Model. In Hughes, Agatha C. and Hughes, Thomas P., eds., Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 413–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buck-Morss, Susan. 2002. Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Charnes, A. 1958. Foreword to “On the Translocation of Masses.” Management Science 5, 1: 1.Google Scholar
Charnes, A. and Cooper, W. W.. 1958. On some Theorems of L. V. Kantorovich, J. R. Isbell and W. H. Marlow. Mimeo, Nov. Evanston: Northwestern University, The Technological Institute ONR Research Project on Temporal Planning and Management Decisions under Risk and Uncertainty; Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute of Technology, ONR Research Project on Planning and Control of Industrial Operations.Google Scholar
Charnes, A. and Cooper, W. W.. 1962. On Some Works of Kantorovich, Koopmans and Others. Management Science 8, 3: 246–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Randall and Restivo, Sal. 1983. Robber Barons and Politicians in Mathematics: A Conflict Model of Science. Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 8, 2: 199–227.Google Scholar
Cramer, Allan P. 1965. International Copyright and the Soviet Union. Duke Law Journal 1965, 3: 531–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dorfman, Robert. 1984. The Discovery of Linear Programming. Annals of the History of Computing 6, 3: 283–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellman, Michael. 1973. Planning Problems in the USSR: The Contribution of Mathematical Economics to Their Solution, 1960–1971. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Engerman, David. 2004. Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Evangelista, Matthew. 1999. Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gardner, Roy. 1990. L. V. Kantorovich: The Price Implications of Optimal Planning. Journal of Economic Literature 28, 2: 638–648.Google Scholar
Gass, Saul I. 1989. Comments on the History of Linear Programming. Annals of the History of Computing 11, 2: 147–51.Google Scholar
Gerovitch, Slava. 2002. From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isbell, J. R and Marlow, W. H. 1961. On an Industrial Programming Problem of Kantorovich. Management Science 8, 1: 13–17. [Originally prepared in 1958.]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ives, Peter. 2006. The Mammoth Task of Translating Gramsci. Rethinking Marxism 18, 1: 15–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Josephson, Paul R. 1997. New Atlantis Revisited: Akademgorodok, the Siberian City of Science. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Judy, Richard W. 1971. The Economists. In, Skilling, H. Gordon and Griffiths, Franklyn, eds., Interest Groups in Soviet Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 209–51.Google Scholar
Kantorovich, Leonid. 1958 [1942]. On the Translocation of Masses. Management Science (Oct.). [Originally pub. in Comptes Rendu (Doklady) de L'Academie des Sciences de l'URSS 37 (1942): 199–201.]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kantorovich, Leonid. 1960 [1939]. Mathematical Methods of Organizing and Planning Production. Campbell, R. W. and Marlow, W. H., English trans. Management Science 6, 4 (July): 366–422. [Originally published by Leningrad University in 1939.]Google Scholar
Kantorovich, Leonid. 1992. Autobiography. In, Lindbeck, Assar, ed., Nobel Lectures, Economics 1969–1980. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Kantorovich, Leonid and Koopmans, Tjalling. 1976. Problems of Application of Optimization Methods in Industry. Stockholm: Federation of Swedish Industries.Google Scholar
Kantorovich, V., Kutateladze, S., and Fet, Y., eds. 2002. Leonid Vital'evich Kantorovich: Chelovek i uchenyii [Leonid Vital'evich Kantorovich: man and scientist]. Vol. 1. Novosibirsk: Scientific Publishing Center of RAS.Google Scholar
Kantorovich, V., Kutateladze, S., and Fet, Y., eds. 2004. Leonid Vital'evich Kantorovich: Chelovek i uchenyii [Leonid Vital'evich Kantorovich: man and scientist]. Vol. 2. Novosibirsk: Scientific Publishing Center of RAS.Google Scholar
Katsenelinboigen, Aron. 1978–1979. L. V. Kantorovich: The Political Dilemma in Scientific Creativity. Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 1, 3: 129–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelley, Donald R. 1973. The Soviet Debate on the Convergence of the American and Soviet Systems. Polity 6, 2: 174–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koopmans, Tjalling. 1949. Optimum Utilization of the Transportation System. Econometrica 17: 136–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koopmans, Tjalling, ed. 1951. Introduction. In, Koopmans, Tjalling, eds., Activity Analysis of Production and Allocation. Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, Monograph 13, New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1–12.Google Scholar
Koopmans, Tjalling. 1957. Three Essays on the State of Economic Science. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.Google Scholar
Koopmans, Tjalling. 1960. A Note about Kantorovich's Paper, “Mathematical Methods of Organizing and Planning Production.” Management Science 6, 4: 363–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koopmans, Tjalling. 1962. On the Evolution of Kantorovich's Work of 1939. Management Science 8, 3: 264–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas. 1977. The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lampland, Martha. 1995. The Object of Labor: Commodification in Socialist Hungary. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lange, Oskar. 1971 [1938]. On the Economic Theory of Socialism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Language and Machines: Computers in Translation and Linguistics. 1966. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council, Publication 1416.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1988. The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno and Woolgar, Steve. 1986 [1979]. Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Facts. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Levien, Roger E. 2000. RAND, IIASA, and the Conduct of Systems Analysis. In, Hughes, Agatha C. and Hughes, Thomas P., eds., Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 433–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merton, Robert K. 1957. Priorities in Scientific Discovery. American Sociological Review 22, 6: 635–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, Alfred. 1970. Theories of Convergence. In, Johnson, Chalmers, ed., Change in Communist Systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 2002. Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mirowski, Philip. 2004. Review of Slava Gerovitch's From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics. Journal of Economic Literature 42, 1: 214–15.Google Scholar
Mises, Ludwig von. 1935 [1922]. Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth. In, Hayek, F. A., ed., Collectivist Economic Planning. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy. 2002. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montias, J. M. 1961. Review of L. Kantorovich's Economic Calculation of the Best Utilization of Resources. Econometrica 29, 2: 252–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, Ethan. 2006. Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richmond, Yale. 2003. Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Scarf, Herbert E.(with collaboration of Terje Hansen). 1973. The Computation of Economic Equilibria. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scarf, Herbert E.(with collaboration of Terje Hansen). 1975. The 1975 Nobel Prize in Economics: Resource Allocation. Science 190: 649, 710, 712.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, Harry. 1960. Soviet Economist Veers from Marx. New York Times, 12 June: 10.Google Scholar
Shapin, Steven. 1994. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tinbergen, Jan. 1961. Do Communist and Free Economies Show a Converging Pattern? Soviet Studies 12, 4: 331–41.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ward, Benjamin. 1960. Kantorovich on Economic Calculation. The Journal of Political Economy 68, 6: 545–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zauberman, Alfred. 1960. New Winds in Soviet Planning. Soviet Studies 12, 1: 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar