Paper long abstract:

This paper shows how global modelling was constructed as a politically neutral and universal predictive technology of governance in the context of West-East technology transfer. From the late 1950s forecasting was introduced in Soviet central planning. The scope of forecasting was extended to include global modelling of world climate and economy. This paper argues that global modelling was a predictive technology that had significant political implications because it demanded unprecedented ways of cooperation across the Iron Curtain. Analysing several core institutional settings where global modelling was jointly developed by Eastern and Western scientists, such as the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the UN programs, this paper outlines how new and subversive ideas about governance were smuggled into the Soviet Union through global modelling.

At IIASA non-secretive efforts to develop global models were made possible despite - or rather, thanks to - Cold War confrontation and socialist competition. The world partitioned and uncertain was perceived not as much as a problem, but as a resource that allowed the advance of scientific knowledge, creating and spanning personal informal networks, sustaining interest in the increasingly remote future and establishing considerable access to the circles of top decision makers. Drawing on a study of archives in Moscow and Laxenburg, as well as more than twenty interviews with the scientists involved, this paper discusses new empirical material about Soviet efforts to cooperate in the field of global modelling and their impact on the emerging notions of global future.