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.

This article deals with the growth of a national school student press in Sweden during the 1950s and first half of the 1960s. It outlays the role of student magazines in furthering school democracy by investigating the nationwide periodical SECO-aktuellt and the press organisation SVEP (Svensk Elevpress). The article departs from an understanding of press activity among school youth as a form of collective action during the mid-post-war period. This activity became part of a pupil movement that demanded increased influence and participation in decision making, as well as expanded forms of self-government. Drawing from earlier historical research, the article portrays this press activity as taking place “from below” since youth often was marginalised in the past and not always seen as legitimate historical actors. The article also deploys perspectives from research on social movements, and analyses school student press activities in Sweden as “repertoires of contention.”

This article analyses two secondary school competitions – the International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) and the International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) – as platforms for early elite fostering in science between the years 1967 and 1984. It argues that the two arrangements can be understood as one of many Cold War arenas of the time period. The article further discusses how participation in the competitions in its various forms – the pre-selection, the preparations, the scientific exams, the celebratory activities, the more leisure-adjusted parts – contributed to form practices of distinction that separated the contestants from other same-aged individuals of their generation. The identities and self-images that the pupils were encouraged to develop came from a multilayered blend of both national and international discourses. Consequently, a certain kind of Cold War-specific elite fostering took place that reflected the interwoven character of science, education and politics during the second half of the conflict.