The Soviet Atomic, Space, and Information Ages

World War II was the crucible of much of the world we now know, not just in geopolitics and economics but also in science and technology. This course focuses three key military technologies that emerged to prominence then: nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and digital computers. Each would define its own "Age" - Atomic, Space, and Information - in the popular imagination. That popular vision is often highly Americanized, located paradigmatically at Norad, Cape Canaveral, and Silicon Valley. As an exercise in interrogating that teleology, we will examine the USSR's own distinctive "Ages" from the end of the war to the post-Soviet era.