Authors

Siobhan Hearne¹;  ¹ The University of Manchester, UK

Discussion

This paper explores intra-republic humanitarian relief in the late Soviet Union through the lens of pan-Soviet solidarity. The perestroika era has long been interpreted as a moment of colossal social, political, and economic rupture. The pillars upon which Soviet identity had been built rapidly eroded amid widespread civic mobilisation against the government and the CPSU. The idea of fraternal ‘friendship’ between the multiethnic Soviet peoples—a cornerstone of propaganda that had long been instrumentalised to meet state goals—corroded as the USSR’s population increasingly fractured along ethnolinguistic lines.
This period was also marked by interlocking humanitarian crises encompassing natural and man-made disasters, mass displacement, and public health crises. Within this context, certain groups interpreted the idea of pan-Soviet friendship as a call for solidarity and mutual aid. The Chernobyl disaster, Armenian earthquake, and the HIV epidemic resulted in Union-wide mobilisation as citizens from across the country donated money and equipment to centralised fundraising initiatives in Kyiv, Moscow, and Yerevan.
This paper explores intra-republican humanitarian aid by examining the activities of the Union of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies of the USSR (more commonly known as the Soviet Red Cross) in the late 1980s. As the USSR’s only official humanitarian organisation in the pre-perestroika era, the Soviet Red Cross had branches in every republic and region of the country and its networks could be rapidly mobilised to distribute relief, as well as to share information and resources. Drawing upon archival material from Belarus, Estonia, Moldova, and Ukraine and an array of published periodicals, this paper will examine how the Soviet Red Cross provided a channel for pan-Soviet and All-Union mobilisation, even as the Union itself was pulling itself apart.