Mapping knowledge transfer in the Soviet Union

Abstract Knowledge transfer in the Soviet Union is commonly seen as taking place under the absolute dominance of Russian. Omnipresent as the only Union-wide scientific language, Russian did indeed occupy an extremely influential position as a relay language for knowledge transfer within the Soviet Union, from the Socialist Camp as well as from so-called capitalist languages. Nevertheless, there are activities that suggest a more complex system of different source and target languages and corresponding modes. The present article will explain these activities in detail using the example of encyclopedic knowledge and its dissemination in the Soviet Union and especially in the Soviet Ukraine. While it is well known that knowledge from a communist point of view had been propagated from the early 1920s onward, there were a series of other and lesser-known efforts at spreading encyclopedic knowledge that generated a rather complex system of knowledge transfer.