Late-Soviet International Entanglements in Medicine, Academic Institutes, and Publishing

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The last decade has witnessed rapid growth in scholarship on the USSR’s Cold War international entanglements, with a particularly strong emphasis on cultural diplomacy. This panel turns attention to three understudied realms of soft power politics: medicine, academic institutes, and publishing. Drawing on archival records, published sources, and oral histories, these papers examine varied ways that Soviet professionals encountered the so-called First and Third World ideas and actors while at home and abroad. Michaels explores the work and life of Soviet personnel sent to Cuba to support the building of a socialist healthcare system. Wilson traces how left-wing thinking from Europe, Latin America, and beyond influenced the emerging second generation of Marxist opposition inside the late-Soviet Union. Magnusdottir and Pristed examine the emergence of the USSR’s answer to Scientific American in the form of V mire nauki, which served as an outlet to facilitate and sustain scientific exchange despite the tensions of the early 1980s. Taken together these papers shed light on Soviet state strategies and their inadvertent consequences for actors enmeshed in these efforts.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Louis H. Porter, Texas State U

Papers

• An Unbreakable Friendship: Soviet-Cuban Medical Internationalism, 1960s-1970s - Paula Michaels, Monash U (Australia)

• Left-Wing Dissent, Reformist and Internationalist Cultures, and the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, 1977-1982 - Natasha Wilson, U of Melbourne (Australia)

• Book Diplomacy: The Semi-Diplomatic Spaces of Soviet-American Official Publishing Relations, 1975-1984 - Rósa Magnúsdóttir, U of Iceland (Iceland); Birgitte Beck Pristed, Aarhus U (Denmark)

Discussant

• Alessandro Iandolo, U College London (UK)