Abstract

In the early 1920s, the Rockefeller Foundation's International Health Board was presenting itself as the watchtower of public health for the world at large. Yet Soviet Russia was never included in any of the International Health Board's programs, despite the efforts of the Russians to reach out to the Board. This paper examines the exclusion of Russia as a function of the conceptual and structural lenses through which the International Health Board 'saw' post-revolutionary Soviet public health. It also speculates about the ways in which those who spoke on behalf of Soviet public health contributed to the perceptions of the Board.