A Tradition Sadly Fading

This month we celebrate the 130th anniversary of the Russian Red Cross Society (RRCS). The RRCS was officially born on May 3, 1867, when the imperial-medic Karol put forward a proposal to establish the Russian Society in order to take care of sick and wounded servicemen. The First Statute of the Society was sub-mitted to the State Council and approved by Tsar Alexander II.

But Russian traditions of mercy and clemency go further back in history than 1867. In 1812, during the Russo-French War, philanthropist Fyodor Rtishchev financed transportation of the wounded from the battlefield and provided them with medical care. During the Crimean war of 1853-1856, the famous Dasha Sevastopolskaya and her female-comrades  helped to cure the wounded of Sevastopol.

Later, three years after its foundation, the RRCS sent 30 Russian surgeons to help victims of the French-Prussian War of 1870-1871. In 1877-1878, during the Russo-Turkish War, 32 special RRCS trains carried more than 100,000 wounded and sick back from the front. The total sum spent by the RRCS helping victims of that war was some 17 million rubles, which had much greater value at that time than today’s battered Russian currency. In 1897 the RRCS built the first Russian hospital in Addis-Ababa, capital of Ethiopia. And RRCS financial aid to victims of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 amounted to 50 million rubles, a huge sum.