(Krasnyi Krest), the generalized name of a number of revolutionary organizations in Russia that were created to help political prisoners and exiles.
Such an organization—the Red Cross Society—was first formed under the People’s Will in 1881 by Iu. N. Bogdanovich and I. V. Kaliuzhnyi. A foreign department, headed by P. L. Lavrov and V. I. Zasulich, existed between 1882 and 1884. The Red Cross of the People’s Will was a semilegal organization that was partly funded by the bourgeois intelligentsia, which was sympathetic to it. In the 1880’s, after the extermination of the People’s Will, the Red Cross was called the Society for Assistance to Political Exiles and Prisoners, although the former name continued to be used. With the beginning of the mass workers’ movement, the leading role in the Red Cross passed to the Social Democrats. Collections for arrested and exiled persons were taken among workers. After the defeat of the Revolution of 1905–07, émigré revolutionaries created a number of societies and organizations that performed the functions of the Red Cross, including “assistance groups,” foreign divisions of the political Red Cross, the Kraków Union for Assistance to Prisoners, and the Committee for Assistance to Political Prisoners at Hard Labor in Russia.
(in the Azerbaijan, Tadzhik, Turkmen, and Uzbek Union republics of the USSR and in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, and all Arab countries, the Red Crescent; in Iran, the Society of the Red Lion and Sun), societies existing in many countries to assist prisoners of war and sick and wounded soldiers; in peacetime they provide help to victims of natural disasters and in a number of countries carry out measures to prevent disease. The national Red Cross societies, the first of which were formed in 1864 and which are independent of one another, form the International Red Cross and are unified by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the League of Red Cross Societies (LRCS). The organization that became the International Committee of the Red Cross (which consists of 25 Swiss citizens) was created in 1863 at the initiative of the Swiss humanitarian H. Dunant.
The LRCS, which is a federation of national Red Cross societies of most of the countries of the world, was created in 1919 for better coordination of the activities of the national Red Cross societies in peacetime (the International Committee, under the charter, was set up to operate in wartime); in 1974 it united the societies of 121 countries (more than 230 million people). The supreme body of the league, the board of governors, consists of representatives of every Red Cross member society of the league; it meets once every two years. Between sessions the functions of the council are performed by its executive committee.
The basic principles of the Red Cross were first formulated at a conference of representatives of 14 European countries in Geneva in October 1863 and set down in the Geneva Convention of 1864 for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick of Armies in the Field. The convention, which was revised and supplemented in 1906 and 1929, was one of a number of international agreements to serve as the basis of the 1949 Geneva conventions on protection of war victims. Under the existing charter (adopted in 1965), the supreme body of the International Red Cross is the conference, which is convened once every four years. In the period between conferences, the standing commission consisting of nine persons (a Soviet representative has been taking part in its work since 1952) acts as the supreme coordinating body. Geneva is the headquarters of the leading bodies of the Red Cross. In the USSR the Union of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies of the USSR emerged in 1923 as a result of the unification of societies of the individual Union republics; it joined the LRCS in 1934.
V. V. ALEKSANDROV