On October 3, 2024, CDHM welcomed speaker Severyan Dyakonov to present on his postdoctoral research. High-level takeaways included a variety of archival sources demonstrating the Soviet Red Cross influence in myriad settings, and widespread presence during the Cold War period with discussion topics covering the nature of the archival work contributing the project, the intricate dynamics of collaboration among regional powers at odds, as well as historical and context-specific definitions of concepts such as 'health' and 'humanitarianism' in multilateralism. See more detail below.

Abstract: From the 1950s onward, representatives of the Soviet Red Cross participated in the governing bodies of the International Red Cross, turning the movement into a stage for Cold War debates on humanitarianism and health care. Moscow leveraged the Red Cross to gain secure access to international audiences, particularly in the rapidly decolonizing regions of Asia and Africa. By the 1960s, the Soviet Red Cross had established permanent medical, research, and educational facilities in Algeria, Ethiopia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Cambodia, aiming to cultivate new medical communities. A distinctive feature of the Soviet medical profession at this time was the predominance of women among doctors and researchers. As a result, Soviet-run hospitals abroad were intended to exemplify the achievements of socialist modernity. This research draws on archives from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, as well as American, Canadian, British, Bulgarian, and Russian archival sources.

Bio: Severyan Dyakonov is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada). After completing his PhD at the Geneva Graduate Institute in 2022, Severyan held an SNSF Postdoc Mobility Fellowship at Harvard and New York University, where he worked on his ongoing research project on the history of the Soviet Red Cross.