Голубь Курчатова: фигурации (пост)советского ядерного миролюбия

Вестник Пермского университета. Серия: История. 2024. Т. 66. № 3. С. 197–213.

Orlova G.

The article is devoted to the rhetorical, political and ethical entanglements of the atomic age, embodied into a new understanding of the world as well as into new fragilities and responsibilities. Noting the epistemological challenges of exploration the discursive production of the peace in the USSR, which was identified as one of the most indoctrinated practices of late socialism, the author analyzes indirect transitions between ethics and propaganda through the lens of a single slogan. The statement “Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier”, which appeared in the late 1950s – early 1960s on the banners of demonstrators and was later attributed to the atomic supervisor Igor Kurchatov, has become a Soviet atomic imperative and a key discursive figure of the (post)Soviet atomic peacefulness. Describing the figurations of the slogan in the context of the confrontation between two systems, nuclear diplomacy and the establishing a global agenda for the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, the author demonstrates how the USSR participated in the struggle for the significance of the peaceful atom and defended its moral priority in the propaganda use of this brand with the help of new rhetoric. Focusing on the adventures of the authorship of the statement, she reveals their entanglement with the genealogy of morality and the development of an ethical position for a Soviet nuclear scientist in between nuclear war and peaceful atom. Particular attention in the article is paid to the contribution of science journalist Vladimir Gubarev to the retrospective restoration of the authorship of the Soviet atomic imperative. By creating this discursive fiction, one of the main chroniclers of Sredmash simultaneously carries out the both, propaganda and ethical work.

Keywords: холодная война, propaganda, пропаганда, Cold War, sociotechnical imaginaries, социотехнические воображаемые, discursive figure, peaceful atom, дискурсивная фигура, мирный атом, nuclear ethics, nuclear sublime, ядерная этика, ядерное возвышенное

Publication based on the results of: Soviet Economic Policy: normative models and implementation practices (2024)