The Scientific-Technical Cooperation within the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance in the 1970s and 1980s

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Martin Bemmann
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 505943245

As long as the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) existed (1949-1991), the so-called Scientific-Technical Cooperation (STC), coordinated within its framework, represented an important aspect of the multilateral cooperation of its up to ten member states. However, until today, this STC has found hardly historiographical interest. The proposed project aims to change this. With a paradigmatic view on the GDR as well as on CMEA’s Moscow-based secretariat and multilateral working bodies the project will exemplarily analyse the STC in the fields of agriculture and forestry as well as in environmental protection. It will focus on the 1970s and 1980s when the STC expanded significantly in terms of institutions and personnel. By investigating the relevance the STC had for participating experts, states and the CMEA in political, economic and scientific regards the applicant hopes to contribute to three more general historiographic debates. First, the project promises to yield new insights into the international research collaboration of socialist states within and beyond the so-called ‘Soviet bloc’s’ borders. Second, it will explore the room for manoeuvre a socialist international organisation could develop and it will assess to what extent CMEA and its STC activities contributed to the coherence of the socialist camp. Third, the project aims to broaden and differentiate recent debates about the role socialist countries played in European and global history of the 1970s and 1980s.The applicant of this project is supposed to work on sub-project 1. From the perspective of the GDR he will analyse the contents, forms, institutions and actors of the STC and ask for the motives of governments and scientists to engage in this form of cooperation. Also, he will assess its economic, scientific and political relevance for participating countries and individuals. A doctoral student, to be hired with funds from the project, is supposed to work on sub-project 2. Its aim is to evaluate the role CMEA’s Moscow-based secretariat and multilateral working bodies played in the shaping and development of the STC.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Melanie Arndt