Science towns as fragments of a new civilisation: the Soviet development of Siberia

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century, the Russian and Soviet regimes in Moscow had looked eagerly at the territories beyond the Urals as a potential horn of plenty – a vast, empty continent, filled with natural riches and resources. Finally, by the late 1950s, Khrushchev's bureaucracy was prepared for a massive colonisation of Siberia. The critical piece in this assault consisted of a series of ‘scientific complexes’ – colonies consisting of an elaborate scientific campus, good quality housing, and urban and civic amenities. From the late 1950s onwards, dozens of such complexes were erected. Focusing on the area around Novosibirsk, this article examines the unlikely alliance around this project between apparatchiks, who wanted exploitation and control, and scientists, many of whom wanted freedom from these very apparatchiks, Moscow's central command. It also looks at the broader, tragic struggle by the Soviets to realise their quasi-utopian projections about Siberia, in an area that in reality is one of the most barren and inhospitable territories on Earth.