American-Soviet Medical Society Records

Correspondence, receipts, financial records, film descriptions, and journal publication editorial files document the activities of the American-Soviet Medical Society generated by Robert Leslie as the Society's business manager. The papers have been organized into five series: a biographical series (containing the FBI materials), a series for administrative files, a series for subject files, a series for the American Review of Soviet Medicine, and a series for film correspondence and transcripts. The material dates from the entire period of the Society's existence (1943-1949) and beyond, although there is more from the Society's later years than from its early years.

While the incomplete FBI files contained in the first series do not give a full characterization of Leslie or of the Society, they do provide the historian with a vivid and sometimes colorful account of the government's investigations of liberal and leftist groups during the Cold War's early years. In addition to the biographical information in this collection about Leslie, researchers may also wish to consult an oral history interview between Leslie and the National Park Service relating to Leslie's work with the Public Health Service on Ellis Island. A copy of the transcript of the interview is located with the oral history collections of the National Library of Medicine.

The administrative files in the second series give a comprehensive picture of the changes in the Society's financial health that occurred as the Soviet Union reverted back from U.S. ally to enemy. The business correspondence, arranged alphabetically by surname of correspondent, is mostly routine exchanges regarding subscriptions, though other segments are devoted to local Society chapters, annual meetings, and operation of the Society's library. The financial files would be useful to the researcher as an indicator of the Society's fiscal health through the years.

The subject files contain extensive and important correspondence between Leslie and Henry Sigerist, as well as some files regarding the Society's promotion of Sigerist's Medicine and Health in the Soviet Union, including a copy of this book, autographed by Sigerist especially for Society members. Embassy correspondence and exchanges of literature illustrate the Society's direct interactions with the U.S.S.R. Accounts of Leslie's trip to the Soviet Union are also located in this series, as well as Progressive Party and Congress of American Women materials belonging to Sarah Greenberg, M.D., Leslie's wife.

The American Review of Soviet Medicine series provides drafts, correspondence, clippings, abstracts, translations, and printed versions of complete journal issues and reprints generated by the Society. Some material identifying translators, authors, reprints, and exchange arrangements were recorded on index cards (a significant part of AMSOV's work was hiring locals with language skills to translate the Russian language articles). These index cards may be particularly valuable to researchers as they contain comprehensive information exceeding the actual journal editions present in the collection.

The files on the Society's collection of Soviet medical films (the collection does not contain any of the actual films themselves) contain mostly routine correspondence, arranged alphabetically by film title, and the typed transcripts of the films provide some insight into their contents.