After Stalin’s death in 1953, amid Nikita Khrushchev’s internationalist push to showcase the superiority of socialist modernity, Soviet individuals, ideas, and materials began to circulate widely throughout decolonizing societies in Asia and Africa. Soviet scientists and engineers and were dispatched abroad to construct steel plants in postcolonial India. Translated Soviet books and magazines made their way into Nigerian homes and Ghanaian libraries. Soviet heavy machinery and consumer goods went up for purchase at countless fairs and industrial exhibitions, from Tehran to Tripoli. Why and how these interlocking and overlapping networks of Soviet science, trade, culture, and diplomacy developed, however, is still a matter of intense debate among historians of the global Cold War. This panel’s task is to undertake a creative reassessment of some of the common frameworks and conceptual categories that scholars have used to study such complex global entanglements. While the papers share a larger thematic focus on Soviet development aid, trade, and scientific expertise in the global South and are all based on multi-sited research, each case study considers distinct forms of exchange within diverse geographical and post-colonial contexts, from Mali in West Africa and Mozambique in South East Africa to the South and South-east Asian countries of India, Ceylon, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

The papers make the case for a more diverse conceptualization of Soviet foreign aid practices, both along the lines of human agency and in terms of the kinds of material exchanges that come under the category of “development” assistance. The presenters use case studies to critically assess the historical value of framing Soviet economic and scientific activities during the Cold War in terms of resource scrambles, political agendas, and ideological struggles. Banks’s study shows how women played a key, if understudied role in the building and maintenance of a Soviet development regime in Mozambique, which emerges as a site for the racialized practice and display of gender norms. Bachman’s paper, meanwhile, untethers the USSR’s Cold War-era book translation and publication program from the category of “propaganda” and instead locates many of its intentions and effects within the zone of development politics. Iandolo argues that in the case of the USSR’s trade relations with Mali, political considerations trumped economic and material needs, while Siddiqi advances an alternative conceptual framework for understanding Indo-Soviet scientific collaborations.

The commentator for this session, Dr. Audra Wolfe, has published two monographs on global Cold War-era competition in the fields of science and technology, including her most recent Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science (2018). With extensive knowledge of what the United States was doing to compete with and monitor Soviet scientific and development activities in the Third World between the 1950s and 1980s her commentary promises to encourage a productive, and multi-sided discussion. We expect historians interested in the global Cold War period, science, development, literature, and foreign relations as well as those with area studies experience in Asia and Africa will enjoy participating in this session.