Message in a Bottle: Peace!

“Of all professions, scientists may be uniquely capable of generating and sustaining peace among nations.” So says Neil DeGrasse Tyson in his book, Starry Messenger. He says “we share a common mission statement—to explore the natural world and decode the operations of nature”.

I’ve always felt this, but had never thought it into words. My own research was on muskoxen, an animal whose range circles around the global north, through several countries, so the community of muskox researchers was similarly circumpolar. It was thrilling to meet and work with people from all over the world when they came for extended research visits, and at international conferences. I loved being part of a scientific community that transcended national identity. We were scientists first, with national identities almost an afterthought.

The movement of scientists around the world fosters this. Not only is there collaboration across borders and oceans among researchers, but researchers also move temporarily or permanently around the globe to pursue science.

My now husband participated in science as a peace-making enterprise. When relations between the US and the USSR were still fraught, John participated in cross-border research where American walrus biologists spent time on Soviet research vessels. They were collecting data on walruses in the North Pacific, an area of ocean flanked by what was then the Soviet Union (now Russia) and Alaska. The data collected on those trips were shared among the researchers on board, and their collaborators back home, and the resulting scientific publications carried American and Soviet names.

Communication between the two countries was very restricted at that time, so knowledge of each other was quite limited.

The work on board the research vessels was two-fold. There was the daytime work, cruising into the floating ice fields where walruses live, to collect data, and the evening work of drinking vodka in unwise quantities. The joke at the time was that you were sacrificing your liver in the service of your country.

Being a young man, a student quite used to drinking unhealthy quantities of beer, John was impressed by the Soviet way of drinking, which included eating heavy foods which served to protect the stomach and slow the effects of the alcohol. John says the soviet biologists would arrive in a stateroom with a tray of potatoes, sausages, and delicious black bread, which they encouraged everyone to start eating before the real drinking got going. Drinking like that is never “safe”, but the food helped.

On Soviet trips the Commissar, the government officer whose job was to monitor and dampen anything his countrymen might say to the Americans, would be in attendance. John says the Commissar never fitted in, he was that person you wish weren’t at the party, whose presence is a drag on the fun.

These eating, drinking, and laughing sessions lasted hours, with the difficulties with language barriers decreasing in inverse relationship with quantities of vodka consumed. John tells of inebriated scientists helping each other to their own staterooms, only to all turn around and help each other back again. I never heard whether the Commissar hung-in ‘til the bitter end, or whether he might have slipped away unnoticed.

Exchanging gifts is important, not just nation to nation, but also among individuals. John gave out loads of lapel pins, which were very popular, and his graduate student advisor, a world authority on walruses, always took, of all things, fresh bananas, as a special treat for a particular scientist; bananas were not available in the Soviet Union at that time. We still have our collection of colorful lacquerware spoons, and mini samovars, and drawings and paintings made specially.

No one was really fluent in the other’s language, and some on both sides had very little foreign language indeed. Although the Americans didn’t have an official minder, they also weren’t above having a party-pooper in their number. When sitting down for an evening of vodka this particular man produced from his duffle bag the soft cheese that comes in a plastic tube with a portal on the side, like a belly button, through which the cheese is squeezed onto crackers or bread. His fellow Americans were horrified that he’d brought this atrocity on board, and the Soviets were fascinated. It raised so many questions: why would such a thing ever be manufactured? And more importantly, why would you bring it on an international research cruise?

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After the Soviet Union dissolved, John, working for the US federal government, participated in similar research trips on Russian vessels, now studying Steller sea lions in the North Pacific. Some of the Russian biologists moved, continuing their joint research, but now based in the US.

Neil deGrasse Tyson describes a magical meeting between Americans and Russians where “we all started talking about the space race of the 1960s and 1970s, and the future of space exploration … that’s when all barriers evaporated … I felt like I had known every Russian in the room my entire life—as though we were childhood friends … the emotional connections were deep, and the friendships rose above earthly politics.”

He doesn’t say whether the vodka served by the head of the facility “from a secret door behind his desk” made a difference to the success of the meeting.