This article was originally presented as a paper at the symposium “Observing and Making Meaning: Understanding the Soviet Union and Central Europe through Travel” held at the University of Toronto, 18-20 October 2002. This symposium was co-sponsored by the Joint Initiative in German and European Studies (University of Toronto) and the Deutsche Akademische Austausch Dienst (DAAD). In revising the paper, I drew on both the general discussion and the specific comments made by participants. I am particularly grateful to Diane Koenker for her insightful comments on an earlier version.

1 Rockefeller Archive Center, Rockefeller Foundation, Record Group 12.1 (hereafter RAC RFRG 12.1), Vincent diary, 1 May 1925, interview with Richard Pearce.

2 The Division of Medical Education was created in 1919 to help “strategically placed medical schools in various parts of the world.” Rockefeller Foundation, President's Review and Annual Report (New York, 1920), 6. For the surveys, see William Schneider, “The Men Who Followed Flexner: Richard Pearce, Alan Gregg and the Rockefeller Foundation Medical Divisions, 1919-1951,” in William H. Schneider, ed., Rockefeller Philanthropy and Modern Biomedicine: International Initiatives from World War I to the Cold War (Bloomington, 2002), 7-61.

3 Schneider, “The Men Who Followed Flexner,” 18.

4 For the medical literature program, see Solomon, Susan Gross, “The Power of Dichotomies: The Rockefeller Foundation's Division of Medical Education, Medical Literature, and Russia, 1921-1925,” in Gemelli, Giuliana and MacLeod, Roy M., eds., American Foundations in Europe: Grant-Giving Policies, Cultural Diplomacy, and Trans-Atlantic Relations, 1920-1980 (New York, 2002), 31-51.Google Scholar

5 As DME Director Richard Pearce admitted, “constructive [is] probably not a good term in contrast with emergency.” RAC RF RG 12.1, Gregg diary, 25 August 1924.

6 RAC RF RG 1.1/700A/16/120, minutes of the Rockefeller Foundation, 21 May 1924.

7 For example, in November 1925, at a dinner arranged for him in Paris, the Russian Commissar of Public Health, Nikolai Semashko, invited the head of the Rockefeller Foundation's Paris Office, Selskar Gunn, to make a trip to Russia. RAC RF RG 5/1.2/238/3052, Gunn to Russell, 13 November 1925.

8 Diplomatic relations were not initiated until 1933. For a study of the early “years of silence,” see Kennan, George F., Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920 (Princeton, 1956).Google Scholar

9 Solomon, Susan Gross and Krementsov, Nikolai, “Giving and Taking across Borders: The Rockefeller Foundation in Russia, 1921-1928,” Minerva 39, no. 3 (2001): 265-98.Google Scholar For the tacit consent of the Department of State, see RAC RF RG 12.1, Vincent diary, 1 May 1925, interview with Richard Pearce.

10 Solomon, Susan Gross, “'Being There': Fact-Finding and Policymaking: The Rockefeller Foundation's Division of Medical Education and the ‘Russian Matter,’ 1925- 1927',” Journal of Policy History 14, no. 4 (October 2002): 384-416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 For the foundation's change of heart on going to Russia, see Solomon and Krementsov, “Giving and Taking.“

12 Solomon, “'Being There.'“

13 For the correspondence and debriefings, see RAC RF RG 5 IHB/D 1.2 (Corresponding Program) 785 Russia.

14 RAC RF RG 1.1/785 USSR/1/1, Russell to Gunn, 19 August 1924.

15 Bales, Kevin, “Charles Booth's Survey of Life and Labour of the People in London 1889-1903,” in Bulmer, Martin, Bales, Kevin, and Sklar, Kathryn Kish, eds., The Social Survey in Historical Perspective 1880-1940 (Cambridge, Eng., 1991), 49-66.Google Scholar

16 Converse, Jean M., Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence 1890- 1960 (Berkeley, 1987), 22-29.Google Scholar

17 Flexner, Abraham, Medical Education in the United States and Canada, a report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (New York, 1910).Google Scholar

18 Converse, Survey Research in the United Stales, 29-31.

19 Fosdick, Raymond B., The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation (New York, 1952), 96.Google Scholar

20 Converse, Survey Research in the United States, 29.

21 Buhner, Bales, and Sklar, eds., Social Survey in Historical Perspective.

22 By assigning both the generic and the particular to the realm of knowledge, my argument differs from that of James C. Scott, who assigns the generic to the realm of knowledge and the particular to the realm of techne or practical ways of doing things. Scott, James, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998).Google Scholar

23 For the model of medical education championed by the foundation, see Fosdick, Story of the Rockefeller Foundation, 93-123.

24 From the early 1920s on, the foundation's International Health Board was involved in constructing schools of public health in London and Rome and was considering similar projects in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Turkey based on the model developed at Johns Hopkins University. See John Farley, “To Cast Out Disease: A History of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation (1913-1951)” (unpublished manuscript). I am grateful to Farley for allowing me to consult a portion of this manuscript. See also Fee, Elizabeth, “Designing Schools for Health in the United States,” in Fee, Elizabeth and Acheson, Roy M., eds., A History of Education in Public Health: Health That Mocks the Doctor's Rules (Oxford, 1991), 155-94.Google Scholar

25 Solomon, Susan Gross, “Social Hygiene in Soviet Medical Schools, 1922-30,“ Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 45, no. 4 (October 1990): 153-221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Eileen Janes Yeo, “The Social Survey in Social Perspective,” in Bulmer, Bales, and Sklar, eds., Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 49-66.

27 RAC RF RG 1.1/100 INT/4/35, Vincent to Secretary, 21 July 1922. Allan Burns was director of the Carnegie Corporation's Americanization study; Alan Wardwell had been a member of the American Red Cross mission to Russia (1917) and chairman of the Russian Student Fund (1922). Graham Taylor, Jr., was the assistant to the American ambassador to Russia, 1916-1919. Fisher, H. H., The Famine in Soviet Russia, 1919-1923: The Operations of the American Relief Administration (New York, 1927)Google Scholar, 328wl5. For the range of American groups that provided medical assistance to Russia, see Margaret Trott, “Passing through the Eye of the Needle: American Philanthropy and Soviet Medical Research in the 1920s,” in Schneider, ed., Rockefeller Philanthropy and Modern Biomedicine, 129.

28 Selskar M. Gunn was adviser to the International Health Board on public health administration in Prague (1920-21) and director of the Paris office (1922-27). RAC Biography Files / 8. Also RAC RF RG 3/908/5/34, 44-46.

29 For the approach to Gunn, see RAC RF RG 1.1/785 USSR/1/1, Gunn to Rose, 5July 1922.

30 RAC RF RG 12.1, Embree diary, 30 August 1920.

31 RAC RF RG 1.1/785 USSR/1/1, Rose to Gunn, 1 November 1922.

32 Ibid., Eversole to Gunn, 8 October 1922.

33 Ibid., Eversole to Wardwell, 12 October 1922.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., Eversole to Gunn, 14 September 1922.

36 Ibid., Eversole to Semashko, 30 October 1922.

37 Ibid., Eversole to Wardwell, 12 October 1922.

38 Ibid., Eversole to Gunn, end 1922 (no specific date).

39 Ibid., Eversole to Gunn, 11 September 1922.

40 Ibid., Eversole to Semashko, 30 October 1922. Eversole referred to the Commissariat of Health of “the Soviet Republic of Moscow” [sic].

41 Ibid., Eversole to Gunn, end 1922 (no specific date).

42 Solomon, Susan Gross, “Through a Glass Darkly: The Rockefeller Foundation's International Health Board and Soviet Public Health,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biomedical Science, no. 3 (2000): 409-19.Google Scholar

43 In the early 1920s, the foundation was besieged with requests to aid Russian emigres or “refugees” as they were termed. Solomon and Krementsov, “Giving and Taking.“

44 RAC RF RG 12.1, Vincent diary, 21 December 1922.

45 Ibid., 7 January 1923.

46 Ibid., Russell diary, 7January 1923

47 RAC RF RG 1.1/785 USSR/1/1, Gunn to Rose, 5 July 1922.

48 Ibid.

49 RAC RF RG 1.1/700 Europe/17/123, Vincent to Pearce, 12January 1923.

50 Ibid., Vincent to Pearce, 16January 1923.

51 RAC RF RG 12.1, Russell diary, 31 January 1923.

52 Vincent was aware that Eversole might be disappointed with the post. RAC RF RG 1.1/700/17/123, Vincent to Pearce, 16January 1923.

53 RAC RF RG 5 IHB/ D 1.2 (Corresponding Program) 785 Russia, Embree to Flexner.31 January 1923.

54 RAC RF RG 12.1, Embree diary, 30 January 1923.

55 The NIB submitted its report to the American Relief Agency prior to publication. Weissman, Benjamin M., Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief in Soviet Russia, 1921-1923 (Stanford, 1974), 149.Google Scholar The report, issued in February 1923, discussed the factors contributing to the famines of 1921-22 and 1922-1923, the resources available in Russia and from foreign relief agencies, and the steps being taken by the Soviet government to ease the situation. Merle Curti, American Philanthropy Abroad: A History (New Brunswick, N.J., 1963), 287-88.

56 See Fisher, Famine in Soviet Russia, 533-39.

57 RAC RF RG 12.1, Vincent diary, 23 January 1923.

58 RAC Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, III/3/9/105, Woods to John D. Rockefeller, 9 February 1923. Hoover agreed that teachers, professional people, and students should be rescued from starvation.

59 RAC RF RG 12.1, Russell diary, 31 January 1923.

60 RAC RF RG 13/900 History, Gregg, 225-27.

61 RAC RF RG 1.2/700/1/2, “Summary of Conference, April 2-11, 1923 between R.M.P. and H.O.E. with assistance of S.M.G. on European work of the Division of Medical Education.“

62 By mid-1924, Eversole was in charge of emergency assistance to fourteen countries including Turkey, Finland, and Greece. RAC RF RG 1.1/700A/16/120, Minutes of the Rockefeller Foundation, 21 May 1924.

63 Eversole acquired formal responsibility for the delivery of literature to Russia on 1 July 1924. Prior to that, the program was under the aegis of the New York office and Gregg.

64 RAC RF RG 12.1, Pearce diary, 6-7 April 1924.

65 In the autumn of 1923, Rockefeller President Vincent had told Eversole he would accompany Gunn to Russia. RAC RF RG 12.1, Vincent diary, 4 September 1923.

66 RAC RF 3.1/906/2/21, Eversole to Pearce, 29 December 1923.

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid., Memorandum dated 14 February 1924.

69 RAC RF 3/908/11/123, Excerpt from Russell's interviews with Rose, 30 April 1924.

70 The surveys varied over time in the amount of background material included. In 1916, Jerome Greene, Rockefeller Foundation secretary, criticized the brevity of some of the surveys used by the foundation's International Health Board and recommended that they include a “thoroughly adequate knowledge of the whole social, educational, and economic background of a country.” After 1922, the officers opted for less comprehensive surveys. Cueto, Marcos, ed., Missionaries of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America (Bloomington, 1994), 4-7.Google Scholar

71 For Gantt as a fact finder for the Rockefeller Foundation, see Solomon, “'Being There.'“

72 For a comparative study of the representatives of the Russian Commissariat of Public Health stationed in foreign capitals in the 1920s, see Susan Gross Solomon, “For Foreign Consumption” (unpublished manuscript).

73 RAC RF 785 A Rus, Medical Education in Russia (bound, unpublished volume), 2:109.

74 Ibid., 2:134.

75 Ibid., 2:103.

76 Ibid., 2:108,129.

77 Solomon, “Social Hygiene in Soviet Medical Schools.“

78 Schneider, “The Men Who Followed Flexner.“

79 For hygiene, see ibid., 128, and Solomon, “Social Hygiene in Soviet Medical Schools.“

80 For a concern with prevention, see RAC RF 785 A Rus, Medical Education in Russia, 2:71.

81 Ibid., 2:154.

82 Penfield, Wilder, The Difficult Art of Giving:TheEpic of Alan Gregg (Boston, 1967), 158.Google Scholar

83 Schneider, “The Men Who Followed Flexner.“

84 For the briefing book, see RAC RF 785 A Rus, Medical Education in Russia, vol. 2; for the 1928 report and for Gregg's travel diary, see ibid., vol. 1 (1927).

85 RAC RF RG 12.1, Gregg diary, 8June 1927.

86 In ethnography the “subjective” personal narrative and the “objective” description have sometimes coexisted uneasily. Mary Louise Pratt, “Fieldwork in Common Places,” in Clifford, James and Marcus, George E., eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography: A School of American Research Advanced Seminar (Berkeley, 1986), 27-50.Google Scholar

87 RAC RF RG 12.1, Gregg diary, 6 December 1927.

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid., 8 December 1927.

91 Ibid., 19 December 1927.

92 Ibid., 15 December 1927.

93 Ibid., 10 and 11 December 1927.

94 Ibid., 19 December 1927.

95 Ibid., 6 December 1927.

96 Solomon, “Social Hygiene in Soviet Medical Schools.“

97 RAC RF RG 12.1, Gregg diary, 10 December 1927.

98 Ibid., 12 December 1927.

99 Solomon, “Through a Glass Darkly.“

100 RAC RF 785 A Rus, Alan Gregg, “Report on Medical Education in Russia,” Medical Education in Russia 1:1. The report may have been dated 1927, but it actually appeared in May 1928.

101 Ibid.

102 Ibid.

103 National Library of Medicine, Archives, Gregg papers, Box 25, Rockefeller Foundation 1927-1929, “Russian Report.“

104 This was not unusual for country reports. Schneider, “The Men Who Followed Flexner,” 19.

105 RAC RF 785 A Rus, Gregg, “Report on Medical Education in Russia,” 2:2.

106 Ibid., 2:3.

107 Ibid., 2:10.

108 Ibid. Although Gregg reported that students of proletarian background received preferential admission, he also noted that his colleagues believed that the students who entered were eager to learn and confident of the value of knowledge.

109 RAC RF 785 A Rus, Gregg, “Report on Medical Education in Russia,” 2:19.

110 Ibid., 2:22.

111 Ibid., 2:21.

112 For the goals of the new medical education program, see I. S. Ruzheinikov, “Reforma vysshego meditsinskogo obrazovaniia,” Biulleteri Narkomzdrava, no. 11 (1924): 27.

113 RAC RF 785 A Rus, Gregg, “Report on Medical Education in Russia,” 2:30-35.

114 Ibid., 2:34.

115 Ibid., 2:36. “At the II University Medical Clinic, wards not clean, but patients look comfortable. The histories were the best I have seen in Europe.” Ibid., 2:39.

116 Ibid., 2:37.

117 RAC RF RG 12.1, Gregg diary, 19 December 1927.

118 Solomon, “'Being There.'” Between 1928 and 1933, fifteen fellows from Soviet Russia would take up awards from the Rockefeller Foundation's Division of Medical Sciences. Solomon and Krementsov, “Giving and Taking.“