1) The MCI was made up of representatives from the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), the International Scientific Radio Union (URSI) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Originally formed by the IUGG at its Edinburgh Assembly in 1936, it was revived by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) in 1948.
2) The fourth union approached was the International Geographical Union.
3) Minutes of the Morning Session, IATME Assembly, 23 August 1951: Archives of the Royal Danish Meteorological Institute (hereafter ARDMI) § IATME [II] \16 "Dr Joyce''/
4) S. Chapman "The International Geophysical Year, 1957/8" MS: Archives of the Australian Academy of Science § MS53 [1] Item 1. Geography and geology were included in his list of possible IGY disciplines.
5) Laclavère-Laursen, 20 December 1951: ARDMI § IATME [II] \17 "Prof. Coulomb''/
6) "The Second Meeting of the CSAGI: General Report'' Annals of the IGY (hereafter Annals) (see [CSAGI, 1958, p. 85]).
7) [Goryachev, 1999, pp. 59-63]; A. G. Grek, Cruel Uranium, 2004, http://www.memorial.krsk.ru/Articles/200402.htm.
8) [Strömgren, 1952, pp. iv-xi]. Lindblad was no stranger to the conduct of sensitive international scientific affairs, having mediated between American and British astronomers and their German colleagues during World War Two. In 1952 he became president of ICSU.
9) Stratton-President, Soviet Academy of Sciences, 8 September 1952; Herbays-same, 27 April 1953; Chapman-same, 29 July 1953: Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences (hereafter ARAS) § 579 [3] \481/.
10) In 1947, before the Cold War had fully set in and four years before becoming president of the Academy, Nesmeyanov accepted the honorary post of vice-president of the International Union of Chemistry, as it then was. On the strength of this the Union claimed the Soviet Academy as a member.
11) Klumov-Topchiev, 21 January 1953; Topchiev-Tikhonov, 4 June 1953; Tikhonov-Topchiev, 10 June 1953: ARAS § 579 [3] \481/.
12) Nesmeyanov-Chapman, 4 March 1953 (exact date is from ARAS): Papers of Sydney Chapman, University of Alaska (hereafter SC) § IGY [62] \254/. Nesmeyanov wrote to Hill in the same terms on the same date. The letter to Chapman was sent to the CSAGI office in Belgium and received the following day, so perhaps by diplomatic bag.
13) The other nine members were: Th. Th. Davitaya, B. A. Vvedenskii, Z. V. Topuriya, A. A. Kopytin, P. A. Gordienko, Ye. K. Fyodorov, N. V. Pushkov, G. I. Golyshev and M. E. Ostrekin: ARAS § 579 [3] \481/ f. 42.
14) Chapman-President and Council of the Soviet Academy, x 2, 13 December 1953: ARAS § 579 [3] \481/; Nesmeyanov's letter to Chapman in March 1954 was probably a response to these letters rather than to the earlier correspondence handled by Topchiev.
15) [Povzner, 1966, p. 208]. This unique account of the organization of the Soviet IGY programme, by an insider, mirrors its subject by saying little about rockets and satellites.
16) A. V. Topchiev, draft instructions and memo, n.d. but on or by 20 September 1954: ARAS § 579 [3] \481/ ff. 26-28.
17) "Draft Report of the Meeting of the CSAGI Bureau with the Soviet Delegation at the I.U.G.G. Assembly'', n.d.: SC § IGY [62] \254/; see also [Nicolet, 1984]. Monin, though trained as a meteorologist, was probably present in a political capacity, since he was working in the Science Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU at the time. Chapman also met diplomats from the Soviet Embassy in Rome.
18) ARAS § 579 [3] \481/ f. 29.
19) "Notes of a meeting between S. Chapman and four of the USSR representatives appointed by the USSR Academy of Sciences to attend CSAGI'' n.d.: SC § IGY [62] \254/.
20) Belousov's late arrival may have resulted from last-minute changes to his prepared address to the meeting, perhaps by Soviet officials: author's interview with John Simpson, 1 March 1991.
21) Draft instructions, c 20 September 1954: ARAS § 579 [3] \481/ ff. 27-8; see also [Povzner, 1966, p. 208]. There was no verbatim record, and the Soviet delegation did not circulate a written summary of their plans; this may have been a tactical mistake, at least in respect of Antarctica (below). The eleven Soviet delegates to the preceding, fortnight-long IUGG Assembly probably also outlined their plans for the IGY, language and other things permitting.
22) Gamburtsev-Presidium, 9 November 1954: ARAS § 579 [3] \481/ f. 105.
23) [Editorial, 1955]; Draft IGY Cosmic Rays Programme: ARAS § 683[1] \1/.
24) According to Povzner [1966, p. 201], Bardin only took over from Gamburtsev in February, because of the latter's failing health. (He died in June.) Bardin is said to have been chosen for his managerial skills and for his experience in dealing with industry during and after the war, since Soviet IGY stations and expeditions would need quantities of new equipment and construction. How the Soviet IGY programme related to the Academy's share in the Fifth (1951-1955) and Sixth (1956-1960) Five-Year Plans is unclear.
25) Two broad sets of affiliations could be suggested. The first may have included the Hydro-Meteorological Service, its parent body GlavSevMorPut (the Northern Sea Route Administration), and Leningrad. The second may have included NIZMIR –the Academy's Institute for Geomagnetic, Ionospheric and Radio Research –and planetary geophysics in general, the Ministry of Communications, and Moscow. Belousov's rise to leadership in Soviet geophysics might reflect his ability to bridge this divide. But all this remains conjectural.
26) Bardin-Nicolet, 7 April 1955, cited in Nicolet-Bardin 14 April 1955: SC § IGY [52] \50/.
27) The official story on Belousov's French is that he learned it from a Belgian neighbour in the 1920s. But Laclavère believed, perhaps on the best authority, that Belousov had had a French governess in his affluent, pre-revolutionary childhood.
28) "In the Central Region" in [Afinogenov, 1961]; "Reminiscences of Galina Nikolaevna Pushkova'' n.d. (http://www.izmiran.ru/info/personalia/npushkov/o_pushkove/pushkov4.html).
29) Bardin-Academia Sinica et al., 5 March 1955: ARAS § 579 [3] \481/ f. 110 et seq.
30) "Belousov, Vladimir Vladimirovich (Prof., Dr.)'' n.d. but mid-1957: Australian National Archives, Canberra (hereafter ANAC) § A1838 \1495/13/1 Pt 2 /. The most likely occasion for this well-informed but unattributed intelligence report (with American spellings) was Belousov's visit to North America for IUGG and IGY meetings, and a tour of seismological research institutes, in 1957. For Chapman's announcement see Annals vol. 2A, p. 222.
31) [Editorial, 1956; Povzner, 1957a, pp. 91–93]. The latter shows the committee roughly as it appears in volume 9 of the Annals.
32) Author's interview with V. A. Troitskaya, 8 April 1991; see also [Povzner, 1966, p. 203].
33) Coordinated planning only started "at the beginning of 1956": [Povzner, 1966, p. 213].
34) V. S. Zaletaev "The Tasks and Activities of the Consultative Committee'' Izvestiya of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Geographical Series, 1957 (AGU translation); Kalashnikov-Nesmeyanov, 4 December 1956: ARAS § 683 [1] \2/; Bardin- Scherbakov, n.d. but December 1956: ibid.
35) "General List of Stations'' Annals vol. 8, pp. 1-76. The list does not include stations temporarily occupied by oceanographic vessels, polar traverses etc. On 2 November 1956, however, Bardin reported to the Presidium that there would be 350 Soviet geographical stations, not including the standing meteorological network. (The committee listed 293 WMO-registered stations for IGY meteorology, but many locations would have overlapped.) [Povzner, 1957a, pp. 61-66, 87-88] Even allowing for some cancellations the different totals are hard to reconcile. Soviet sources often cite Bardin's other figure of 500 instrumental or discipline stations, i.e. counting the instruments and observers for each discipline at each location as a single station. For a multi-disciplinary programme like the IGY there are always more instrumental than geographical stations. In the end there is little difference between the round figure of 9%, which I give below for the Soviet contribution to the IGY, and the 8% reached by the instrumental stations method [Dolgin, 1983, p. 26]
36) "Report on the fulfilment of the Soviet Union's obligations within the IGY'' n.d. but late 1957: ARAS § 683 [1] \7/.
37) A. Poskonov (Minister of Finance)-Council of Ministers, n.d. but early 1958: ARAS § 683 [1] \7/.
38) Minutes of the Soviet IGY Committee, 16 January 1958, Item IV.2: ARAS § 683 [1] \9/.
39) Minutes of the Soviet IGY Committee, 13 March 1958, remarks by N. V. Pushkov: ARAS § 683 [1] \9/; see also Minutes of the Working Group on Oceanography, 5 April & 27 May 1958: ARAS § 683 [1] \10/.
40) Reports by Yu. D. Bulanzhe on discussions with the Polish, Czechoslovak and Hungarian IGY Committees, February 1958: ARAS § 683 [1] \12/.
41) "General List of Stations'' loc. cit. n. 35 above.
42) The sources (below) do not specify whether the observation was made at NIZMIR's High Altitude Station near Kislovodsk, or at NIZMIR's main complex of observatories and laboratories outside Moscow, which also had optical instruments for solar observation.
43) New York Times, 27 June and 5 July 1957; [Sullivan, 1961, pp. 45-48; Silkin et al., 1962, pp. 38-39].
44) The flagship of the First Expedition, the Ob', was converted, refitted and loaded in 100 days.
45) This was about 10o further west than the location originally proposed in June 1955 (below).
46) Memo, Law-Waller "IGY Bases on Knox Coast'' late 1955, unsent: Papers of Phillip Garth Law, Museum of Victoria (since moved to Australian National Library, Canberra) [21] \7/15/
47) Cable, Australian Dept of External Affairs (DEA), London –DEA Canberra, 23 December 1949: ANAC § A1838 \1495/13/1 pt 1/; "Russian Interest in the Antarctic'' March 1955, Foreign Office Research Department: ANAC § A1838 \1495/13/1 pt 2/; see also [Wolk, 1958, pp. 44-45].
48) US officials first warned their Australian colleagues about Soviet intentions for the Knox Coast in November 1954: Cable 1620, DEA Canberra –DEA London & Washington, 11 July 1955: ANAC § A1838 \1495/1/9/2/
49) Minutes, USNC-IGY Antarctic Committee, 13 October 1954: Archives of the National Academies of Science, Washington (hereafter ANAS) § IGY ‡ 9 Regional Programs: Antarctic \Antarctic Committee: Meetings & Minutes: 1954-1955/.
50) "On the shores of Antarctica'' Komsomolskaya Pravda, 28 January 1955; Vodnyi Transport, 29 January 1955; "Chronicle: the International Geophysical Year'' 1955, loc. cit. n. 23; announcement of Soviet IGY committee, Pravda, 12 April 1955.
51) In May 1954 Berkner prompted the re-establishment of the US National Academy's Committee on the International Scientific Unions and soon became its chairman. This gave him extensive influence over the affairs of ICSU and its member unions, including their dealings with UNESCO.
52) Kaplan-Chairman, OCB Working Group on Antarctica, 7 February 1955: ANAS § IGY ‡ 16 USNC Member Files, Kaplan J \Letter from Kaplan J to Operations Coordination Board: 7 Feb 1955/; Berkner-Nicolet, 15 February 1955: SC § IGY [60] \205/.
53) Prompted by Nicolet, Berkner added Chile to his list but continued to stress that "only the nine nations... [should] be invited'' –Berkner-Nicolet, 26 April 1955: SC § IGY [52] \50/; see also Berkner-Martin, 1 April 1955; Laclavère-Nicolet, 12 May 1955; Laclavère-Berkner, 13 May 1955: all ibid.; also Laclavère circular, 14 May 1955 but posted two days later: SC § IGY [57] \144/. For the cable to Assam: author's interview with Georges Laclavère, 12 June 1990.
54) E. Hoge-President of the Belgian Academy, n.d. but mid-June 1955 at latest; the meeting with Nicolet referred to may perhaps have been 7 May but 7 June is more likely: Archives of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences (hereafter ARBAS) \009061/.
55) The exaggeration may have arisen with Hoge rather than Laclavère. At its meeting in October the Belgian IGY committee rebuked Hoge for taking too much on himself, both before and during the Paris meeting, for which he had had only a fact- finding mandate: ARBAS \009058/.
56) Laclavère-Belousov, 10 June 1955: ARAS § 579 [3] \481/ ff. 136-38.
57) Nesmeyanov-Nicolet, 29 June 1955; Nesmeyanov-Laclavère, 29 June 1955: ibid. ff. 134-5, 157. The letter was mistranslated for the US IGY committee, inserting a Soviet intention to install both bases and thus losing the accommodating tone of the original. Whether it was similarly misunderstood in Brussels and Paris, before Belousov arrived, is not known. In view of what transpired in Paris, it should also be noted that the Soviet committee's choice of possible bases, made on 25 June, was taken with conference papers in front of them which had specified a strong Norwegian interest in Princess Astrid Land and a slight US interest in the Knox Coast. However only Laclavère's letter, and not the accompanying papers, had been translated into Russian. A letter from Bulanzhe to Nicolet in June 1955, asking for the report on geographical distribution of IGY stations from the Rome CSAGI meeting and for the statutes of CSAGI itself, may also have related to Soviet Antarctic plans and Belousov's mission to Paris. Unfortunately like many file copies of Soviet documents its date is incomplete: ARAS § 579 [3] \481/ f. 139.
58) "Belousov, Vladimir Vladimirovich (Prof., Dr.)'': loc. cit. n. 30.
59) Dillon-Secretary of State, 6 July 1955: US National Archives, Washington, Record Group 59 [2773] \702.022/; a follow-up cable two days later reported station changes from the meeting but none by the United States.
60) This phrase was first applied to a point in the Arctic Ocean in 1920 by the Canadian explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson.
61) Soviet IGY expeditions were restricted to aircraft brought in by sea, because a request for air transit facilities in Australia, though never finally refused, was not granted during the IGY. The Antonov-2 planes which supported the Soviet tractor trains could carry about 2 tonnes of freight near sea level; the corresponding figure for the Douglas C-124 "Globemaster'' was 27 tonnes. The latter's average load when airlifting components to an altitude of 2800m for the US South Pole station in February 1957 was 11.7 tonnes: [Sullivan, 1961, p. 303]. Several Soviet aircraft were lost in Antarctic accidents between 1956 and 1959, some during ground handling, but luckily with no loss of life.
62) [Buchheim, 1959, pp. 220-221; Siddiqi, 2000]. Within the structures of the Academy, the ICIC was subordinate to the Astronomical Council of the Soviet Union.
63) Pravda, 5 August 1955.
64) Vertical sounding rockets for the IGY seem also to have been planned and prepared by existing bodies, rather than the IGY committee, but the subject needs further clarification. The programme of such launches drawn up by Korolyov in April 1957, for instance, did not include all those planned for the IGY [Rauschenbach, 1998, pp. 215-220].
65) Despite its name, Blagonravov's commission focused on biomedical rocket experiments.
66) [Povzner, 1957a, pp. 91-93]. Unlike Fyodorov, the heads of ten other working groups were all identified as such in this listing. Also: Day circular "Coordinator's Moscow Visit'', 20 January 1958: ANAS § IGY ‡ 10 \CSAGI: Correspondence: General: 1958/; Day-Berkner, 28 January 1958: SC § IGY [62] \252/. As late as January 1958 Bardin signed a version of the Soviet IGY programme that made no reference to rockets and satellites: ARAS § 683 [1] \4/. A recent comprehensive account of the organizational arrangements which resulted in the first sputniks makes no reference whatsoever to the Soviet IGY committee or to (this) Yevgenii Fyodorov, let alone to any conception by protagonists in the Soviet satellite programme that they were under some obligation to negotiate and then to follow international IGY procedures: [Siddiqi, 2002]. It would be impossible to ignore the US IGY committee in any comparable study of US IGY satellites.
67) Wyckoff-Odishaw "Report of Activity at CSAGI Meeting in Brussels'' 26 September 1955: ANAS § IGY ‡ 6: Earth Satellite Program \Correspondence: Jan-Sept 1955/.
68) Berkner-Chapman & Nicolet, 29 February 1956: ibid.\Correspondence: Feb 1956/; Nicolet-Cardus, 15 August 1956: SC § IGY [54] \79/. The list in Nicolet's transcription included a certain "Tschubukov'' who also failed to appear; a possible but unlikely candidate is meteorologist and climatologist Leonid A. Chubukov.
69) [Povzner, 1966, p. 266] claims that Bardin did enlarge slightly on Soviet satellite payloads at Barcelona, but eye-witness accounts do not support this.
70) Berkner-Nicolet, 16 June 1957; Reid, memo, 24 June 1957, enclosing Bardin-Nicolet 10 June 1957, the report, and Porter's MS comments: ANAS § IGY ‡ 6: Earth Satellite Program \Correspondence: 16-30 Jun 1957/.
71) Reid, memo, "Manual on Rockets and Satellites'', 4 June 1957: ibid. \Correspondence: 1-15 Jun 1957/; Odishaw, circular, 23 July 1957: ibid. \Correspondence: 1-15 Jul 1957/.
72) According to Blagonravov the number of Soviet delegates to Washington was cut at the last moment –Bobrovnikoff- Kaplan, "IGY Rocket and Satellite Conference'', n.d.: ANAS § IGY ‡ 10 CSAGI: Disciplinary Conferences \Rockets & Satellites: Washington: US Delegation: 1957/. With Boris Petrov instead of Blagonravov, the same small delegation had already visited Britain in July. They gave lectures on Soviet upper atmosphere research with rockets at the University of London and the Royal Air Force Aeronautical College. The Soviet satellite programme was touched on only briefly.
73) Bardin-Berkner, 16 August 1957: SC § IGY [62] \257/. A copy also went to the Royal Society where, bizarrely, by August British scientists were registering their concern at the difference in frequencies but also their interest in the experimental possibilities of the Russian choice. They even tried to alert their sleep-walking colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic, but all to no avail –Moore-Odishaw, 27 August 1957: ANAS § IGY etc. as n. 72 above. The strangest aspect of the frequencies affair, however, is that all Soviet IGY satellite information distributed before Sputnik 1 was carefully collected and included in the Manual on Rockets and Satellites, which then became Annals vol. 6 –except for this perhaps embarrassing letter.
74) Fyodorov-Day, 20 January 1958, enc. with Day-Berkner, 28 January 1958: SC § IGY [62] \252/.
75) Day-Shapley, 4 February 1958: ANAS § IGY ‡ 6: Earth Satellite Program \CSAGI on Rockets & Satellites: Chapter XI: Folder 2: 1957-1959/; "Amendments to the CSAGI Guide to IGY World Data Centers'', 4th Issue, Section XI, 2 April 1958.
76) Annals vol. 10, pp. 182-84, and vol. 7, p. 315; see also [Newell and Townsend, 1959].
77) Richter-Reid, 10 September 1958: ANAS § IGY ‡ 6: Earth Satellite Program \Correspondence: 1-18 Sept 1958/; Odishaw- Elvey, 30 April 1959: ANAS § IGY old filing system [49] \646 etc/; Van Allen-Leonard, 4 May 1959: ibid. ‡ 6: Earth Satellite Program \Correspondence: May 1959/; Belousov-Newell "Fulfillment of the V CSAGI Meeting Resolutions'', May 1959: ibid. ‡ 16: USNC Member Files \Newell H E: CSAGI: Correspondence: 1958-1959/.
78) DOSAAF was controlled by the Central Committee of the CPSU and led by military officers. Its activities included driving schools, gun clubs and aviation clubs, including the Chkalov. Its publications included a booklet by V. P. Petrov on Guided Missiles and Rockets in 1957, a semi-weekly newspaper Soviet Patriot, and, jointly with the Ministry of Communications, the monthly magazine Radio: [Gouré, 1962, 1973].
79) Annals vol. 48, 1970. A rough estimate would be that this group forms between 2 and 3% of named authors. The bibliography was poorly compiled and any consultation of Soviet IGY literature soon reveals more items, many of them by yet more women.
80) [Bardin, 1958], ch. 8. Klyonova continued her IGY work in November-December 1957 during the stormy first cruise of the Mikhail Lomonosov in the North Atlantic.
81) R. Bulkeley (manuscript in preparation, 2008). The deaths of Grigorii A. Gamburtsev, Ivan P. Bardin, A. V. Kopteva and O. A. Kamenskaya during or soon after the specified period are presumed to have been natural.
82) Minutes of the Working Group on Oceanography, 10 March 1958: ARAS § 683 [1] \10/. One source of confusion, evident from the minutes, was that the entire national oceanographic programme was being referred to internally as "IGY'', although much of it was not officially assigned to the international programme.
83) "Belousov, Vladimir Vladimirovich (Prof., Dr.)'': loc. cit. n. 30.
84) P. Hart "Status of Data Flow from USSR to WDC's A'', 28 May 1959: ANAS § IGY ‡ 6 Earth Satellite Program \Correspondence: May 1959/.
85) "Report on work done by WDC B from July 1957 to 1 March 1960", n.d.: ANAS § IGY ‡ 8 World Data Centers \WDC-A General Correspondence: Jan-Mar 1960/. One intriguing but sadly unreliable source draws a vivid picture of the censorship of satellite information by a nameless official based at the offices of the IGY committee: [Vladimirov, 1973], ch. 2.
86) "Report on functioning of WDC-B 1957-1975": ARAS § 683 [1] \194/.
87) Figures for delegates are based on [Editorial, 1958, pp. 48-51]. The report in the Annals states that "514 persons took part in the meetings'' –vol. 10, 1960, p. 1.
88) The scene was vividly captured in the documentary film Alert! (Mosnauchfilm, 1959). The US IGY committee had been prevented from hosting the event by the Eisenhower Administration's policy of non-recognition towards four countries with IGY committees.
89) Author's interviews with Marcel Nicolet, 26-28 September 1989.
90) V. V. Belousov and N. V. Shebalin (eds) Annals vol. 30, 1965; M. A. Ellison (ed.) Annals vol. 23, 1962.
91) Annals vol. 48, 1970. The proportion would be even higher if the anonymous items, most from Western sources and generally of lesser scientific value, were removed from the calculation.
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