Soviet Medical Diplomacy and the Early Cold War

• In Event: Soviet Medicine and Post-War Worlds: The Challenges and Opportunities of International Engagement

Abstract

Based on preliminary research in the archives of the USSR Ministry of Public Health and Medical Workers Union, this paper explores the ways that the Soviet state sought to instrumentalise medical cadres as vectors of soft power. Part of a larger project on Soviet medical and health engagement with what was in the language of the Cold War the so-called First, Second, and Third Worlds, this paper focuses in particular on Soviet efforts in the late 1950s and early 1960s to expand contact with US and Canadian health professionals. Particular attention will be paid to the interpersonal, affective dimension of these entanglements, with an effort to see soft power through the lens of the history of emotions.

Author

• Paula Michaels, Monash U (Australia)