Soviet-French Scientific Relationships in the Field of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry in the First Half of the 1970s

In this article, the author analyses the scientific relationship between Soviet and French molecular biologists and biochemists in the first half of the 1970s. This cooperation is associated with the names of the prominent Russian and French scientists. The pioneers of this cooperation were Academicians Alexander Baev, Yuri Ovchinnikov, Alexander Spirin, Lev Kiselev, and other Soviet scientists, and Marianne Grunberg-Manago, François Gros, and Jean-Pierre Ebel, on the French side. Soviet-French scientific cooperation involved numerous research centers on both sides and manifested most vividly in the symposia devoted to “Physico-chemical origin of life”, the first of which was held in 1974 in Pushchino. The symposia were held alternately in the USSR/Russia and France until the mid-1990s. The topic under consideration is not sufficiently reflected in the works of professional historians. Despite the fact that Russian/Soviet/French scientific ties, including those in the field of biology, are to some extent represented in Russian and international literature, only the first steps have been made in the study of effective interaction between molecular biologists and biochemists of the two countries. The paper draws on a wide range of new archival sources from the funds of the Main directorate of the foreign relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Institute of molecular biology and some other funds of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The author study the symposia in Pushino (1974, 1975), Concarno (1975) and the results of the foreign trips of Soviet researchers. The Soviet-French scientific links are analyzed in the context of international political situation. The relations with France were more favorable in comparison with other Western countries, which provided the development of scientific contacts. In the field of molecular biology and biochemistry in the first half of the 1970s we can notice: several symposia in both countries, exchanges of the delegations, mutual trips and joint research of Soviet and French scientists. At the same time the author touches upon the difficulties that hindered international contacts. These problems were common for the Soviet science and were caused by the Iron Curtain and clumsiness of the Soviet bureaucracy.