Far from being a continuous flow from its discovery down to its explanation, the actual history of superconductivity has been affected by numerous turbulences all along the XXth century. This talk will explore the most significant events from the 30's to the 2003 Nobel prize for physics: low-temperature in Kharkov with Shubnikov and Weissberg Cibulski (childhood friend of Arthur Koestler's wife); rebirth of cryophysics in UK mostly by German Jewish physicists, forced to exile by Hitlerism; superfluidity discovered in Moscow, thanks to Stalin, and in Cambridge in spite of him. This chaotic history culminated in two theoretical parallel developments isolated one from each other during the cold: Ginzburg-Landau on one hand, BCS on the other. As a result, superconductivity is not only a fascinating development in physics but also a study case of relationships between physics and society.

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