Once Upon a Time ...: Exhibition Science Bringing Nations Together

In 1956, a year and a half after the establishment of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, the states of the "socialist bloc" signed an agreement establishing a similar international centre for the study of fundamental problems in physics: the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, JINR. The seat of the Institute was chosen to be the town of Dubna, 120 km north of Moscow. Though the establish-ment of JINR was clearly a political response, during the Cold War, to the establishment of CERN, from the very beginning the Institute's activities were aimed solely at investigating the fundamental properties of matter and using scientific discoveries for peaceful purposes.