The World Health Organization’s Global Malaria Eradication Programme (GMEP, 1955-1969) has been seen – with reason – as a Cold War story. In the usual telling, the GMEP formed part of a US-led effort to foster “development” in the global south in order to halt the spread of Communism. This narrative is complicated, however, by the existence of socialist-world malaria eradication programs (including in the USSR) and the presence of Soviet and socialist experts within the GMEP itself from the late-1950s. This paper will examine Soviet narratives of malaria eradication, both at home and abroad. It will recover the particular ways Soviet malaria experts connected their work to questions of superpower competition, decolonization, and postcolonial development. While engaging with the existing framing of malaria eradication as a moment of Cold War rivalry, it will also explore the multidimensional nature of the GMEP as a stage for competition and, simultaneously, a space for expert exchanges and collaborations.
