The Politics of Scientific Governance in an Authoritarian Regime: Purification and Hybridisation of Soviet Cybernetics

Article. — Archiv für Sozialgeschichte. — 2010. — №50. — p. 289-309.To date, histories of Soviet sciences and technologies have been organised around ananalytical distinction between the political and techno-scientific spheres. The relations between the state, governance and techno-science have been described in line with neo-liberal thought as linear, top-down oppression. The norm that techno-science should be free from state political apparatus was implicitly and explicitly asserted in path-breaking studies by Loren Graham, Paul Josephson, Alexander Vucinich, Nikolai Krementsov and Slava Gerovitch. These and other scholars recognised that there was a positive side totechno-science’s dependence on authoritarian government: a secure flow of funding. In the context of a shortage economy those branches of Soviet techno-sciences that provided weapons for Cold War competition, such as nuclear physics, were highly prioritised. On the other hand, some scholars expressed hope that the development of techno-science,and especially computerisation, would liberalise the Soviet regime.