Kimberly Lowe1; 1 Lesley University, United States
Discussion
By 1919 a typhus epidemic raged in Ukraine, infecting millions of Ukrainians and the military effectiveness of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR). Four conflicts overlapped in this contested territory: the Russian Civil War (Anton Denikin’s Ukrainian Offensive against the Red Army, 1919-1920); the Polish-Ukrainian War (1918-1919); Polish-Soviet War (1918/19-1921); and Soviet-Ukrainian War (1917-1921). Based on documents in the International Committee of the Red Cross’s archives, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of the ICRC and Ukrainian Red Cross Society’s joint missions to bring Ukrainians anti-epidemic relief during these politically polarized conflicts. These missions have been briefly mentioned in histories of revolutionary Ukraine, but never analyzed in an English-language work. After the ICRC’s attempts to solicit anti-epidemic assistance from the Western Allied & Associated governments failed, these two Red Cross organizations used their limited resources to send two sanitary trains from Vienna and Berlin to the UNR in 1919 and 1920. This paper details the multiple diplomatic, logistical, and military obstacles encountered by Red Cross personnel. It argues that political commitments directed aid towards or away from the UNR in ways that had significant human, military, and political consequences, but despite this polarization the neutral status of the ICRC provided some valuable protection for Ukrainian aid workers. This case study both provides a window into the specific problems of humanitarian aid delivery during multi-party conflicts and complicates the expectation that in ideological, internal conflicts neutrality loses all meaning.
