Description
by Zhores Medvedev
National Frontiers and International Scientific Cooperation was written between 1967 and 1969 and published in English in 1971. Although since 1971 many changes have affected the problems discussed in the book … its re-issue seems to be fully justified.
The changes which occurred in the years between 1971 and 1975, in the character of international cooperation in the cultural and scientific spheres, and also in the “freedom” of Soviet citizens to move beyond the boundaries of their country, were not dictated by any principle; they were the result of a very effective pressure of public opinion both within Soviet society and outside it, the consequence of concessions, very small in each case, which acquired a legal form. However, these concessions should be seen not so much as enlarging the rights of the citizens, as protecting the bureaucracy from the inevitable fusion of scientific and political thought and from the democratization of the Soviet system … ‘
Zhores Medvedev, Preface to the Paperback Edition, 1975
