ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes two forms of secondary school competitions in science as parallel models of Cold War internationalism from the late 1950s to the 1970s. The International Olympiads in mathematics, physics, and chemistry originated as a concept from the Soviet Union and were spread in Eastern Europe, while the American contest International Science Fair gradually expanded in countries of “the free world”. The simultaneous transfer of these extracurricular events from national to transnational phenomena made them resemble other global theaters of the cultural Cold War. High-performing students were selected in ways that made them embody and showcase the quality of their national educational system and sometimes its political points of departure. The analysis shows that the competitions’ deployment of educational internationalisms during the 1960s and 1970s was shaped by East-West tensions and that this affected them as environments for fostering youth elites in science. During most of the 1960s, these processes were inseparable from the ideological aspects of the conflict, but in the 1970s the Science Olympiads started to allow Western countries to participate. This gradually led to more complex environments for elite formation and shared experiences of belonging to a Cold War youth.
