An unbreakable friendship: Soviet medical internationalism in Cuba in the 1960s

Abstract

Locked in a struggle with the United States after its 1959 revolution, Cuba was a natural Soviet ally in the Cold War. The USSR offered Cuba lavish aid, including in the realm of medicine and health. The 1960s saw dozens of public health officials, medical instructors, and clinicians arrive on the island to help improve the health and wellbeing of Cuban workers and peasants. This article plumbs Russian archives and published Cuban and Soviet medical journals and newspapers to analyse the Cold War as a lived experience through a case study of Soviet cadres on the ground in Cuba. The USSR’s socialist solidarity project in Cuba exemplifies Cold War soft power policies designed to ‘win hearts and minds’. Moscow’s intent to build an ‘unbreakable friendship’ with Havana meant navigating a complex web of relationships. In illuminating the grassroots experience, we argue for the centrality of personal and interpersonal encounters as a window on the state and bloc politics that entangled the First, Second, and Third Worlds.