Hygienists, Antifascists, Social Reformers: An International Network of Medical Specialists and Its Cultural Imagination 1900s to Late 1930s

Between the 1900s and late 1930s, an international network of medical experts merged bacteriology, social hygiene, and antifascism. Figures trained at European institutions and
backed by the League of Nations and the Rockefeller Foundation collaborated briefly with Soviet scientists before the network was shattered by the GreatTerror and World War II. Popular works — such as Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters, Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith, and classic Pasteur biopics — cemented the bacteriologist as a cultural hero, demonstrating how disease prevention, antifascism, and internationalism formed a shared project whose heroic imagery outlived the network itself.

Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies | View More Events