Russian Science in Translation - An Kritika-article by Jan Arend

The current issue (Vol. 18, No. 4, Fall 2017) of the renowned journal "Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History" features an article by Dr. Jan Arend, fromer PhD student and new Postdoc of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies in Munich. Arend explores the relevance of the Russian soil science and the transfer of its knowledge as well as of its theoretical and methodological approaches to the West between the late 19th and the mid-20th centuries.

Exploring the relevance of the Russian soil science and its transfer to the West between the late 19th and the mid-20th centuries, the article provides important insights into the processes by which modern Russian science became internationally visible. Using the example of soil science, Arend reveals practices by which Russian and non-Russian scientists detached scientific concepts and ideas from their formative Russian contexts in order to render them comprehensible and instructive at an international level. The article focuses on two such practices: the translation of scientific texts from Russian into other languages and the joint field trips by Russian and non-Russian scientists that were undertaken to observe soil out in the field, with the goal of finding a common analytic language to describe it.

Jan Arend: Russian Science in Translation: How Pochvovedenie Was Brought to the West, c. 1875–1945. In: Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 18, Number 4, Fall 2017, pp. 683-708.