Securing peace during the Cold War was a task that no nation state could handle alone. Whereas the international community of states tried to establish a binding arms control system, a number of civilian groups also took the initiative to fight against the threat of nuclear war. Among these groups, the Pugwash Movement is one of the most prominent. Its founding manifesto, elaborated by British and American nuclear scientists in 1957, called for their colleagues around the world to take a stand for nuclear disarmament. The Pugwash Movement created a new type of civilian involvement which oscillated between the elitist claim of academic expertise and the search for integration into the peace movement.

The proposed paper addresses the history of the Pugwash movement by taking the example of Austria. Covering a period of investigation from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s, the paper raises two important questions: Firstly, it investigates into Austrian scientists’ Pugwash-related activities between the poles of scientific internationalism, Austria’s policy of neutrality, and the policy of confrontation: How did the country’s reintegration into international scientific co-operations (e.g. CERN) foster the cross-linking of Austrian Pugwashites with the transnational movement? How and why did Austria, a peripheral country in terms of nuclear politics and yet at the heart of Cold War confrontation in Europe, become a platform for the transnational scientific-political dialogue within the Pugwash framework? Secondly, the paper examines the role of scientists as policy advisers to the Austrian government: How did their international cross-linking qualify Austrian experts as political consultants at home? Moreover, did Austrian Pugwashites manage to introduce domestic positions on the international Pugwash agenda?