The Council for the Coordination of Scientific Activities of Academies sciences of the Union republics and the Formation of the Coordination of the Science in USSR

Abstract. The purpose of this article is to reconstruct the process of formation of the system for coordinating scientific work in the USSR, presented through the prism of the history of the Council for the Coordination of Scientific Activities of the Abstract. Academies of Sciences of the Union Republics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Within the framework of this article, the author dwells on the first years of the activity of this structure, analyzing the history of the Council in 1945–1955. The relevance of this problem is due, on the one hand, to its importance for understanding the mechanisms of the functioning of science on the scale of the USSR, and, on the other hand, to its insufficient knowledge by domestic and foreign specialists. The source base of this study was the reports of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, published in the form of separate publications, office documents deposited in several funds of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, materials of scientific periodicals, sources of personal origin, etc. In general, the author of this article considers the following subjects: the reasons for the creation of the Council for coordination of scientific activities of the academies of sciences of the union republics of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the practice of the structures that previously performed coordination functions in the USSR Academy of Sciences, the features of its activities in 1945–1955, the role of this Council in determining the general content of the process of coordinating scientific research in the USSR, etc. The author comes to the conclusion that by the mid-1950s. In the USSR, there were two approaches to defining the main content of coordination activities: it was understood as informing colleagues about the work or subordination, which made it possible to allocate resources in a planned economy. The Council for Coordination, in the opinion of the author, played an important role in approving the first of these approaches.

Keywords: the Council for the Coordination of the Scientific Activities of the Academies of Sciences of the Union Republics, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the coordination of scientific work, the coordination commissions, the Soviet science, the science infrastructure.