Did science in Siberia operate relatively freely in Soviet times, attaining remarkable levels of independence and creativity thanks to distances from Moscow? Or did science in Siberia enable plunder of the region for the benefit of outsiders, facilitating ongoing extraction of resources from the periphery at the center’s behest? In Soviet Sci_beria: The Politics of Expertise and the Novosibirsk Scientific Center, Ksenia Tatarchenko paints a portrait of Siberian science that disavows narratives of resistance and subservience. Focusing on the Siberian Branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, established in 1957, Tatarchenko reveals scientists’ agency and innovation even as they embraced the Soviet project. Soviet Sci_beria makes a compelling case for dynamism in the USSR during a period commonly referred to as “stagnation.” But although the book offers its story as “indispensable for imagining a decolonial Russian future” (15), its exploration of scientists as settlers suggests the limits of decolonizing Siberian science.

Soviet Sci_beria argues that science in Siberia was characterized by genuine organizational, disciplinary, and social experimentation. Such experimentation drew on Siberia’s uniqueness as a rhetorically malleable space that could be transformed into an exemplary place—a “showcase” (19), Tatarchenko writes, borrowing from Michael David-Fox. Scientists used Siberia’s status as a showcase to advance their professional careers and build new fields. Along the way, they aspired to epitomize an ideal version of the Soviet way of life. Their ethos included collaboration in a tight-knit community, advancing and universalizing knowledge, and whimsical play alongside applying science to improving society. As they practiced these ideals, Tatarchenko contends, “late Soviet ‘Scientific Siberia’” became “a lived, enterprising, and situated utopia” (3). Scientists’ belief in their unique ability to contribute to the Soviet project and modernize Siberia became the basis of a corporate identity that Tatarchenko calls “acquired localness” (46). This localized identity fostered an enduring entrepreneurialism in post-Soviet Russia. But its emphasis on elite, global networks also contributed to emigration and an inability to disrupt broader trends of political authoritarianism in Russia and resource extraction in Siberia.

Tatarchenko illustrates the book’s arguments in six chapters focusing on select individuals, institutions, and programs linked with Akademgorodok, the suburb of Novosibirsk that became home to the Siberian Branch. They include mathematicians Mikhail Lavrentiev and Gurii Marchuk, the first two presidents of the Siberian Branch; Novosibirsk State University and the Novosibirsk Specialized Physics and Mathematics School (FMSh), established in 1957 and 1963 in association with the Siberian Branch; and initiatives known as the Torch and Sibirʹ, programs endorsed by the Siberian Branch in 1966 and 1978 with the aim of applying science to the economy. Through their histories, Tatarchenko shows that science in Siberia aimed to transcend barriers “between fundamental and applied science, between research and education, and between experienced leaders and ambitious youths” (43). As a region famously rich in resources, Siberia demanded collaboration between science and industry to fully develop. It therefore provided fertile ground for interdisciplinary study, experiential learning, and the cultivation of novel forms of expertise.

A key role was played by mathematical expertise, which flourished at Akademgorodok and acquired new importance globally with the spread of digital computers, programming, modeling, and numerical analysis. The “mathematization of knowledge” (125), Tatarchenko emphasizes, entailed not only intellectual problem-solving but also navigating political and academic hierarchies and establishing professional norms and values. For those who sought to expand computational mathematics into new research areas and production, the party-state supplied concepts, investment, and institutional flexibility. Rather than an “inherent Soviet incapacity to innovate,” scientists faced challenges—securing patronage, demonstrating payoffs—“inherent in all innovative activities, in capitalist and socialist economies alike” (108).

Analytically sophisticated and empirically rich—dense, even—Soviet Sci_beria pushes understandings of Soviet science beyond frameworks inherited from the Cold War. Tatarchenko delineates a Siberian identity centered not on “exiles, the Gulag, and ‘sharashki’ (the special prison system of laboratory and workshops)” but rather a “scientific lifestyle” (28, 148). As students recruited to FMSh were to learn, such a lifestyle entailed “perseverance, autonomy, and passion” (215), and fun. But “acquired localness” in the book remains an elite identity, as well as a settler one. In the context of the issue of coloniality that Tatarchenko raises in the introduction, its emancipatory potential remains in question; Tatarchenko notes “the continuity of the position stressing loyalty to Moscow and framing the local demands as an expression of national economic interests, not separatist politics” (172). By anchoring Soviet science in the local and regional, Soviet Sci_beria opens the door to further exploration of subaltern knowledges.