Authors

Discussion

Apart from the UN Security Council the Soviet Union did not want to join western-based International Organizations in the aftermath of WWII seeing them as tools of imperialism. Things changed rapidly with decolonization when newly independent countries of Asia and Africa wanted to join UN-based and other International Organizations. I hypothesize that the USSR wanted to follow this trend and joined western based international organizations in the 1950s, such as ILO, WHO, UNESCO, and the International Federation of the Red Cross in Geneva. 

My presentation will focus on Soviet attempts to create alternative spaces of interaction between the national red cross/red crescent societies of Asia and Africa with the Soviet Red Cross Society. The Soviets wanted to influence this new demand for changes in international organizations articulated by the new decolonized countries in the 1950-60s. The USSR had its Red Cross/Red Crescent presence in Algeria, Ethiopia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Cambodia from the late 1950s. Internally, the Soviet Red Cross had over 50 million memberships by the mid-1960s making the organization a platform to popularize socialist ideals at home and abroad, such as health care as a universal human right, women’s rights for work (over 60% of Soviet doctors by mid-1960s were female), and environmental protection.