Transnational HIV-AIDS Action and Citizen Diplomacy in the Late Soviet Union, 1988–1991

This article examines the transnational mobilization of Soviets and North Americans around the issues of HIV and AIDS in the final years of the Soviet Union. The HIV-AIDS epidemic unfolded at a time when the USSR was undergoing profound changes to its social, cultural, economic, and political fabric. The reforms implemented under the premiership of Mikhail Gorbachev (1985–1991) resulted in widespread civic mobilization, intense public discussion of social and political issues, and increased contact between Soviet citizens and their international counterparts. These interconnected processes offered fertile ground for grassroots transnational mobilization, as Soviet citizens increasingly looked abroad for the inspiration, information, resources, and moral support required to address deep-seated political, social, and economic problems. It was within this context that grassroots Soviet HIV-AIDS action groups bypassed state and party institutions to forge their own connections with their international counterparts to obtain material and moral support, and in doing so, challenged the Soviet government’s monopoly on diplomacy and foreign exchange in the field of disease control. The article shows how Soviet HIV-AIDS action was a dynamic engagement between a wide variety of state and non-state actors, the entanglement of liberal and conservative ideas, and a mix of Union-wide and transnational connections.