Though this aspect is not necessarily presented as a central one, one observes that in many cases scientific policy is exploited by governments to accompany their foreign politics. After the arrivalk of Nazis in power in Germany in 1933, the Soviet policy under Stalin turned the corner to get closer to Western bourgeois democracies to test whether a defensive alliance could be envisaged. Whereas the scientific relations with France had been severly reduced from several years, a progressive resume was decided. In May 1934, a blatant “French scientific decade in the USSR” was organized in Moscow in which took part a pleiad of renowned French scientists. A better cooperation was on its way between the two countries and in 1935, a Franco-Soviet week was officially organized by the University of Paris from November 23rd to December 2nd. I intend to focus on this event and try to understand both the political and scientific aims followed by the actors in this occasion.

An important part of overcoming Lysenkoism was extending and strengthening international scientific links of Soviet geneticists, including increased Soviet participation in the international genetic congresses. At the same time, Soviet delegations’ attendance of such congresses resumed in the time of Lysenko’s domination.
Thus, in 1958 Soviet scientists attended the Tenth International Congress of Genetics in Montreal, for the first time after a long break. Despite all of them being Lysenkoists, there’s evidence that the head of the Soviet delegation, the statesman and scientist Vsevolod Stoletov, changed his views and became an advocate of genetics after this trip.
In 1963, Soviet delegation to the XI International Congress of Genetics in Hague comprised 20 researchers, both Lysenkoists and true geneticists. One of them was Dmitry Belyaev, director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch, which became a major center of genetics in the years to come.
Since the mid-1960s, after Lysenko’s downfall, the trend towards Soviet geneticists’ integration into the international scientific community strengthened noticeably. Thus, substantial Soviet delegations attended the congresses in Tokyo (1968) and Berkeley (1973).
Organizing the XIV International Congress of Genetics in Moscow in 1978 was a continuation of this trend. The convening of this congress, however, had been threatened because of the difficulties in Soviet-American relations. Nevertheless Soviet scientists succeeded in convening a world-class scientific event that became a crucial milestone in the history of Soviet genetics.

This study aims to clarify the circumstances surrounding the resumption of scientific exchange between Japan and the Soviet Union during the cold war. The first official academic exchanges between the two countries after the World War II began in May 1955, when 15 members of the Science Council of Japan (SCJ), a representative academic institution in Japan, accepted an invitation from the USSR Academy of Sciences and visited Russia on a scientific inspection tour. Following this visit, interest in Russian studies grew in Japanese academia. In October 1956 the Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration was issued and diplomatic relations were restored. Under these circumstances, the plan to invite Soviet scientists to Japan became a pressing issue. However, it was not until March 1964 that Soviet scientific delegates, including M.V. Keldysh, finally visited Japan. During the moratorium period of about 10 years, the SCJ continued to discuss the invitation of scientists from the Soviet Union at every General Assembly, but the invitation plan progressed very slowly due to the rejection of the budget request required for the invitation and the lack of a cultural exchange agreement between the two countries. Based on the stenographic records of the General Assembly of the SCJ this study sheds light on some of the background to the efforts to resume scientific exchange between the two countries.