Authors

Antonina Skydanova¹;  ¹ University of Fribourg, Switzerland

Discussion

The Ukrainian Red Cross Society was founded in April 1918, at the height of Ukrainian statehood. At that time, the Ukrainian People’s Republic had left the frontlines of World War I and was recovering from its first war with Soviet Russia. A few weeks later, a coup d’état took place and by the end of the year the country was engulfed in a new wave of power struggles. For the next few years Ukraine became a battleground of military confrontation between inherently opposing political forces, plunging the country into an abyss of instability, new destruction and violence, and paving the way for a humanitarian catastrophe. This paper is dedicated to the Ukrainian Red Cross Society, which, as an actor on the humanitarian front, faced the challenges of military and political struggle that divided the people and territory of the country during this crucial period. This presentation focuses on the following questions:

- What were the institutional development trajectories of the Ukrainian Red Cross Society in the context of political regime change and the transformation of Ukraine as a political entity?

- What opportunities for action did the Ukrainian Red Cross Society have, given the unprecedented humanitarian challenges, tasks and restrictions imposed on it by one government or another?

- What was the Ukrainian Red Cross Society like after the forced split, when one of its organisational centres was subordinated to the state structures of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the other remained loyal to the Ukrainian People’s Republic?

- How did the activities of two nominally Ukrainian Red Cross societies influence the representation of Ukraine in the international humanitarian movement and what were their strategies for seeking international humanitarian support for Ukraine?

We hope that this study will contribute to the Ukrainian history of the early 20th century, as the history of the Ukrainian Red Cross Society is a unique mirror of its complicated yet fateful trajectories. At the same time, this study will broaden our understanding of the development of humanitarianism by bringing to the fore a regional actor whose experience is still barely represented in historiography.