Tag: Cold War

Project on the International Red Cross Movement and the Cold War Divide, the 1940s–1980s

May 22, 2025 / / 0 Comments
Severyan Dyakonov at Carleton University’s Archives and Special Collections, MacOdrum Library.
Credit: Dominique Marshall

Severyan Dyakonov is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the Department of History of Carleton University, supervised by Erica Fraser. He is currently in the third year of a research project on the history of the Soviet Red Cross within the broader International Red Cross movement after the Second World War. In this blog entry he wants to briefly talk about themes he is working on and future plans. His current project is part of a long-term commitment to understanding how Cold War dynamics shaped global humanitarianism and public health, particularly within the League of Red Cross Societies (LRCS).

Founded after World War I, the LRCS was created to coordinate the work of national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies around the world. In the aftermath of WWII, the organization—like the United Nations and other major international bodies—underwent a profound transformation due to decolonization. As newly independent nations in Asia and Africa established their own national Red Cross or Red Crescent societies, they joined the League in significant numbers. While there were just over 60 member societies in the 1940s, by the 1970s this figure had doubled to more than 120.

For many of these new states, having a national Red Cross or Red Crescent society served as a marker of sovereignty and international legitimacy. This context also helps explain why the Eastern Bloc, led by the Soviet Union, sought active participation in the Red Cross movement. It offered a valuable platform for engaging with the decolonizing world and promoting alternative models of humanitarianism grounded in socialist ideals.

The Red Cross movement became a key arena for debates over the very meaning of humanitarianism during the Cold War. Socialist countries challenged the dominant philanthropic model, which prioritized emergency aid, and instead advocated for a more developmental approach that emphasized long-term structural transformation. They argued that true humanitarianism required mobilization toward development goals, particularly in newly decolonized nations.

In contrast, Western actors insisted on the neutrality and apolitical nature of humanitarian work, often accusing socialist countries of politicizing the movement. From the perspective of left-leaning thinkers, however, claims of neutrality were often viewed with suspicion—interpreted as tacit alignment with conservative or right-wing ideologies. In the socialist world, humanitarianism was inseparable from the political goal of empowering the decolonizing world to develop independently of former colonial powers. It was not merely about relief, but about supporting a new world order rooted in equality and self-determination.

As part of my research, I examine how Cold War tensions shaped the international humanitarian field by tracing debates within the League of Red Cross Societies. I rely on archival materials from the LRCS, held in Geneva, as well as documents from national Red Cross societies. My first article from this project, titled “‘Resilience, Perseverance, and Sense of Diplomacy:’ The Soviet Red Cross in India, 1954–1963”, has been accepted for publication in the European Journal for the History of Medicine and Health and is expected to appear later this year. I had a chance to present it at Carleton in March.  In Ottawa, I conduct research at Library and Archives Canada and draw on Carleton University Library’s Special Collections to examine the role of the Canadian Red Cross and its involvement in Cold War humanitarian dynamics. John MacAuley, originally chair of the Manitoba branch of the Canadian Red Cross, served as president of the Canadian Red Cross and then of the League of Red Cross Societies from 1959 to 1965. Operating from his office in Winnipeg, he led the organization during a pivotal period marked by decolonization and a significant expansion of the League’s membership. You can watch a video of him visiting the LRCS office in Geneva here and also find lots of other Red Cross related documentaries and reels on the International Federation of the Red Cross historical films collection YouTune resource.

Carleton University holds the archival collection of the Ukrainian Red Cross in Exile (URCE), an organization headquartered in Geneva between 1939 and the early 1950s. Although the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) did not formally recognize the URCE, archival evidence suggests that informal relations existed between the two bodies. The URCE’s historical position is particularly intriguing. During World War II, when Ukraine was under Nazi occupation, it was the Soviet Red Cross that found itself effectively in exile from Ukrainian territory. Meanwhile, the URCE served as a hub for correspondence between the Ukrainian diaspora—such as communities in Brazil—and Ukrainians residing in Nazi-occupied parts of Europe.

In March of this year, I helped organize a seminar at the newly established Center for Digital Humanities and Multilateralism in Geneva. The event brought together scholars and practitioners to discuss the future of Red Cross–related archival research in the digital age. Among the participants were Grant Mitchell, Head of Archives at the International Federation of the Red Cross (LRCS before 1991), and Professor Jean-François Fayet, historian at the University of Fribourg. Together, we explored strategies for the digitization and integration of Red Cross–related archival materials, which are currently dispersed across institutions and countries. I hope the seminar will be helpful to fostering collaborative frameworks for improving global access to humanitarian archives.

Looking ahead, I plan to apply for additional funding to continue developing this project. My aim is twofold: to produce further scholarly output and to build a digital database supported by AI-powered research assistance. This platform would help facilitate research in the history of humanitarianism by making archival materials more accessible and searchable for scholars working across disciplines and geographic areas.

Last but not least, my interest in the theme of humanitarianism extends beyond historical research into current global developments. This spring, I recorded a 55-minute podcast with Dr. Yipeng Ge, a Canadian physician who was suspended from his university program after publicly expressing antiwar views on the conflict in Gaza. Although the suspension was later revoked, Dr. Ge chose not to return and instead joined a humanitarian mission to Gaza. The podcast is available on YouTube and Spotify.

I will be happy to find other researchers that work on similar themes and interested in discussing collaborative research funding options. One of them is the European Research Council Horizon Europe Pillar 2 scheme (cluster 2 Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society) that Canada joined last year. You can reach me out on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and by emailing me:

severyandyakonov@gmail.com

Link for my talk at Carleton:

The Soviet Red Cross in 1950s-60s India-Talk. – Canadian Network on Humanitarian History

Link for event on digital humanities’ seminar:

Digitisation of Red Cross Archives: The Challenges of Digitising the Archives of the International Red Cross and National Societies | IHEID

Link to YouTube video with John MacAuley visiting the LRCS in Geneva:

John A. MacAulay, Chairman League of Red Cross Societies, visits its Geneva headquarters (1959) – YouTube

Link to IFRC archives’ film collection:

IFRC Film Archives Digitization Project (2021)

Yipeng Ge interview on YouTube:

Interview with Yipeng Ge — Canadian Doctor Who Went to Gaza on Humanitarian Mission.

On Spotify:

Interview with Yipeng Ge — Canadian Doctor Who Went to Gaza on Humanitarian Mission. – Interview with Dr. Yipeng Ge – Canadian doctor that went to Gaza. | Podcast on Spotify

ERC Horizon Europe how to apply link:

How to apply to Horizon Europe

CNHH Presents: Essential Reads in the History of Humanitarianism

November 9, 2023 /

Top 5 Reads on the History of Development

~ as recommended by Jill Campbell-Miller, October 2023 ~

When I started looking into the history of Canadian foreign aid some fifteen years ago or so, not much scholarship existed about the history of development and foreign aid. As a student of Canadian foreign assistance, I was fortunate to have David Morrison’s Aid and Ebb Tide: A History of CIDA and Canadian Development Assistance. From a global perspective, the book most often referenced at the time was the late Gilbert Rist’s History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. Though the book is undoubtedly a valuable piece of scholarship, the late Dr. Rist was not a historian, and the book was too broad and too thinly sourced to be comparable to the type of historical scholarship I sought.

Since that time, the landscape has changed dramatically. While I struggled to put together five works of professional history on this subject in the late oughts, today, I struggle to narrow down the choices to just five. I might have felt alone starting my PhD, but little did I know there were many scholars with similar interests working on major projects. While it came late for my historiography chapter, maybe it is not too late for someone else’s PhD dissertation. Here are five to get you started:

  1. Stephen J. Macekura and Erez Manela. The Development Century: A Global History. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Fifteen years ago, I would have been amazed and delighted to find an edited collection of historical essays all covering histories of development. This collection is divided into four thematic groups that examine the origins of development, development in a decolonizing world, Cold War politics, and development and international society. It has a nice balance of geographies, topics, and temporal scopes, and is a good introduction to many of the key areas of study for historians of development. I have a particular soft spot for histories of development that locate the very early origins of the development project, and co-editor Manela’s chapter on “Smallpox and the Globalization of Development” is a great example of this.

  1. Matthew Connelly. Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population. Harvard University Press, 2010.

While perhaps not a “history of development” proper, this book is an absolute must for understanding the development movement of the twentieth century. So many of the aid programs that developed in the 1950s and 1960s were based around the idea of controlling the world’s population, and so many of the prominent figures within important global institutions believed in a gospel of population control. Understanding this history is a crucial part of understanding the whole landscape of development in the mid-to-late twentieth century, and Connelly is not only a good historian, he is also an excellent story-teller.

  1. Sarah Lorenzini. Global Development: A Cold War History. Princeton University Press, 2019.

Odd Arne Westad refreshed the field of Cold War history by forcing his readers to see the rest of the world within a history that had been so often framed by American-Soviet politics in The Global Cold War (2005). Helpful as it was, as a reader in the 2000s, I also hoped for a book that would flesh out the way that development programming played into Cold War politics. Lorenzini’s book has finally brought these two fields together into one comprehensive volume. Arguing that development was “molded by the Cold War and, in turn, actively designed some of its structures” (4), Lorenzini’s book covers a huge terrain – from the colonial precedents of the interwar years to the major projects of American and Soviet aid, to those trying to challenge the bipolar constraints of the Cold War through development.

  1. Corinna R. Unger. International Development: A Postwar History. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

Unger’s book is the type of textbook I craved as a student. It covers the vocabulary and terminology central to development history, the important philosophical and colonial precedents to the post-war development movement, the major programs of the twentieth century, and the critiques and challenges the development movement faced in the late twentieth century and beyond. Unger’s book is a solid first place to start for anyone interested in this field, and despite the breadth of its subject matter, it is quite concise.

  1. Kevin O’Sullivan. The NGO Moment: The Globalisation of Compassion from Biafra to Live Aid. Cambridge University Press, 2021.

I will finish with a book from one of the CNHH’s very own, Kevin O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan’s book is a much-needed bird’s-eye view on one of the most important driving forces of development in the latter years of the twentieth century – development and humanitarian non-governmental organizations. Past books on developmental NGOs have typically had an agenda – either as hagiographies or as take-downs – but O’Sullivan’s book is a critical yet nuanced look at the history of these important organizations within the geopolitical context of the larger development movement. Focusing on three states, Britain, Canada, and Ireland, O’Sullivan examines the “‘progressive, interventionist model of compassion that privileged aid over political solidarity with the Third World.” By taking a transnational perspective, O’Sullivan is able to emphasize the global linkages between many different NGOs, and the ideologies that linked them together. Also, there are just a lot of fascinating stories in this book.

Dr. Jill Campbell-Miller is a historian who specializes in twentieth-century Canadian political and social history. Her interests particularly focus on Canadian foreign assistance and humanitarianism in South Asia during the mid-twentieth century. Her dissertation, which she is currently revising to become a manuscript, examines the history of Canadian foreign aid in India during the 1950s. She completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Gorsebrook Research Institute at Saint Mary’s University, and in the Department of History at Carleton University, and presently works as a civil servant with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. She is co-editor, with Greg Donaghy and Stacey Barker, of Breaking Barriers, Shaping Worlds: Canadian Women and the Search for Global Order (UBC Press, 2021). 

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