Reports of the Soviet-American Commission on Scientific and Technical Cooperation between the USSR and the USA, 1973-1979, as a source for the study of the USSR science policy

This article presents a source analysis of materials created by members of the joint Soviet-American Commission on Science Policy, 1973-1979. Some of the documents discussed are being introduced for the first time, as they have recently become available through the digitization of archival documents and their public access in the U.S. government's Education Resources Information Center and the online archive of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Since the mid-1950s and especially in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Soviet Union has regularly adjusted its science policy in an attempt to create the necessary conditions for the accelerated development of science and to overcome the technological lagging behind Western countries. The changes that took place were repeatedly studied by domestic specialists, but our study offers a look at the key issues of the Soviet Union's science policy through the eyes of American specialists, contemporaries of those events. The documents under study were prepared in the early 1980s and have influenced the study of science policy mechanisms and the evolution of concepts about the priorities of national research strategies in the United States and other countries. At the same time, these documents remained virtually unnoticed in the USSR and then in Russia. The article provides an external and internal critique of the sources, describes the history of the emergence of the working group, its composition, characterizes the authors and the specific conditions (control by the Presidential Administration and the U.S. CIA) in which the work was carried out. The most important conclusions of the research are summarized and the significance of the documents for further study of the issues under consideration is described. The key features of science policy in the USSR and the USA are briefly compared, and the strengths and weaknesses of each system are identified. The influence of the Communist Party on the development of science and technology policy is traced. American specialists noted that in addition to its ideological role, the CPSU was forced to assume the role of the chief administrator and customer of research and development to compensate for the lack of a free market, which in the United States was the main driver of scientific and technological progress. The paper concludes that the reports, being reliable documents of their era, reveal the key issues of the formation of Soviet science and technology policy from the point of view of American specialists, which in turn allows us to see the known events in a new light.