Export of Soviet medicine in the 1920s: medical and sanitary expeditions of the People's Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR in the Mongolian People's Republic

The article considers such an understudied aspect of Soviet international assistance to the Mongolian People’s Republic in the 1920s, as the medical and sanitary expeditions of the People’s Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR. At the start of socialist transformations, the situation in Mongolian healthcare was pitiful. The country lacked organized medical assistance; infectious diseases were rampant; high infant and maternal mortality was observed. Expeditions gathered information about the real state of affairs in medicine; they also directly worked with the population creating a positive image of Soviet medicine among Mongols and winning over their confidence. Gradually the expeditions became not just means of reconnaissance, but also a channel of export for Soviet medical knowledge, technologies and organizational models.