Russia was more hesitant to embrace the Geneva Convention of 1864 than its
European counterparts, but, as European states ratified the convention one by one and Prussia revealed in the German Wars of Unification how valuable private aid workers in war had become, the tsarist autocracy refused to stay idly for long. Elena Pavlovna had created the Exaltation Society in the Crimean War to provide supplementary sanitary workers to the armies, so the precedent for private aid workers in war was already in place, even if the Russian Ministry of War expressed doubts this type of project was necessary. Activists at the Romanov court in the 1860s convinced Empress Maria Aleksandrova and by extension, Alexander II, to embrace the humanitarian movement and create a national aid society. The creation of the Russian Red Cross was not an entirely seamless ordeal for Russia, and the reluctance from conservatives reveals limitations on the autocrat’s ability to effect immediate change. The head of the Orthodox Church and elites in Moscow at first opposed a Red Cross- type organization because it appeared too foreign for Russia. This resistance, however, was only temporary, and by the end of the 1860s Russia possessed a chartered national aid society with a broad membership and limited financial resources. This chapter first traces the history of the Geneva Convention and locates Russia’s limited role in the effort to create this
compact. The latter half of the chapter analyzes the efforts by well-connected Russians to create a national aid society and the resistance they faced from conservatives and doubters.
The classic narrative of the European humanitarian movement begins with Henri Dunant, the co-founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the activist most
63
responsible for hosting a series of conferences in Geneva in 1863 and 1864 on improving the plight of the wounded. Born in Geneva, Dunant spent his young life dabbling in religion, the Christian Unions, which were the German precursor of the YMCA, and colonial business ventures. Fate and economic misfortune led him to Castiglione, a village near Solferino, Lombardy, in hopes of ingratiating himself with Emperor Napoleon III and winning concessions for an unlucky business venture in Algeria. Instead of crossing paths with the emperor, Dunant found himself witness to the aftermath of the Solferino engagement, Europe’s bloodiest battle since Waterloo. This experience prompted Dunant to change his life’s work from conquering Africa with European capital to alleviating pain on the
battlefield, the crusade for which he is most remembered.142
Technically a draw, Solferino proved significant because the French paid little attention to deploying military sanitation services prior to the battle. As a result of this mishap, when Dunant entered Castiglione, he met tens of thousands of wounded who had little hope of finding medical care. Appalled by the grisly spectacle, Dunant volunteered his own services in consoling the wounded and purchasing supplies. This experience moved him deeply, and the next year he penned his famous A Memory of Solferino as an exposé on the horrors of modern warfare and the insufficient attention European armies paid to the
wounded. In the latter half of this volume, Dunant asked, “Would it not be possible, in times
of peace and quiet, to form relief societies for the purpose of having care given to the wounded in wartime by zealous, devoted and thoroughly qualified volunteers?” These
societies, although permanent, could remain inactive in peacetime but always be ready for war. He drew special attention to the work of Elena Pavlovna and Florence Nightingale in the
64
Crimean War, predicting that these women could have accomplished great feats if their brigades had been at Solferino. Since, “the personnel of military field hospitals is always inadequate,” then the only possible answer was “to turn to the public.” And so he proposed
that all nations establish a convention for aid societies, which must be agreed upon in
peacetime because, once hostilities commenced, belligerents would not work in concert with one another. Dunant expressed confidence that no government would hesitate to deny aid to its wounded nor would any public withhold contributions for the wounded; however, he warned that wars would become more deadly as weapons advanced.143
Initially, Dunant self-published 1,600 copies of A Memory of Solferino in late 1862 and sent volumes to Europe’s ruling families, politicians, military men, and newspaper
reporters. The book appealed to a broad audience and even drew praise from Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens, but Florence Nightingale and Jean-Charles Chenu, the former head of the French military’s medical department, considered Dunant’s proposal foolhardy, since, the
state bore responsibility for caring for the wounded.144 Nevertheless, one copy of the memoir reached Gustav Moynier, a lawyer and philanthropist in Geneva, who endeavored to turn Dunant’s idea into an international agreement.
Moynier inspired a small group of generals and military doctors to create the
International Committee for Relief to the Wounded in Wartime, a board that devised plans to make aid to soldiers an issue of international concern. This committee also discussed
methods for improving sanitary technologies and increasing the number of nurses, and they determined that belligerents should give aid workers free access to distribute relief in
143 Henry Dunant, A Memory of Solferino (Geneva: American Red Cross, 1986), 105-28. 144 Boissier, From Solferino, 40-42.
65
wartime and be recognizable by a common symbol. The members concluded that the only way to ensure that European nations followed these principles was to reach an international covenant between states, so they sent invitation letters to a welfare congress in Berlin in 1863 and copies of A Memory of Solferino to rulers and officers throughout the continent.145
By the time the International Committee met again, they had received approval for the covenant from several states including Prussia. Uplifted by this support, they encouraged countries to set up their own relief societies at meeting in March 1863. To ensure that
militaries accepted these societies, the International Committee proffered three rules: Relief societies must be state recognized, voluntary nurses must be subordinate to military
discipline, and the nurses must demand no cost from the armies. At the third meeting of the International Committee, Moynier reported that the Berlin welfare congress had been cancelled, so the five members decided to hold their own congress in Geneva. Fearing European governments would dismiss this proposal as the pipe dream of idealists, Dunant canvassed the continent to drum up support for the Geneva congress. During conversations with European military men, Dunant decided to add the idea of neutrality for medical personnel to the docket of issues to be discussed in Geneva, a decision that Moynier
considered fraught with risk because it impinged on the question of who was a belligerent in war.146
In total, thirty-one individuals from sixteen states and four philanthropic societies attended the meeting in October 1863, the precursor of the First Geneva Convention.
Delegates often were members of general staffs or medical officers.147 Russia’s emissaries to
145 Boissier, From Solferino, 49, 55-56.
66
this first congress were M. E. Esakov and A. A. Kireev, favorites of the two Romanovs pressing for Russia to establish a national aid society, Elena Pavlovna and Konstantin Nikolaevich. Alexander Kireev was Konstantin Nikolaevich’s adjutant and would later become an important Slavophile writer. M. E. Esakov’s background was more obscure, but
the transcript of the 1863 Geneva conference listed him as the librarian for Elena
Pavlovna.148 These two delegates did not officially represent the Russian state. Rather, they served as personal emissaries for the grand duke and duchess. Dmitrii Miliutin, who, as the minister of war, had the power to bind Russia to an international agreement, informed the congress by letter that he received his invitation too late to dispatch an official delegation.149 In reality, the minister of war was occupied at the time with putting down an uprising in the Congress of Poland.
During the four days of debate, three major issues concerned the delegates: the employment of volunteer nurses, neutrality for medical workers, and an emblem to identify neutrals. The first point of contention, over female nurses, pitted Prussia against France and Great Britain. The Prussians supported deploying voluntary nursing brigades to permanent facilities in the rear only because military objectives trumped those of philanthropy.150 The British and French disagreed with the Teutons; British generals claimed they had solved the problems from the Crimean War by reforming the army’s medical services, and the French
147 Boissier, From Solferino, 70.
148Compte rendu del al Conférence Internationale réunie à Genève les 26, 27, 28, et 29 Octobre 1863 pour
étudier les moyens de pourvoir a l’insuffisance du service sanitaire dans les armées en champagne (Geneva: Comité International de la Croix-Rouge, 1904), 19.
149 N. Zaborovskii, “Mezhdunarodnaia konferentsiia v Zheneve ob ustroistve chastnykh obshchestv dlia
posobiia ranenykh,” Voennyi sbornik (August 1864): 381.
67
stressed that civilian volunteers would burden its professional military.151 The delegates surprised their Swiss hosts by reaching agreements easily on the other two issues. They chose a red cross on a white ribbon as the symbol for neutral agents on the battlefield. For the last issue, neutrality for medical workers, there was an historical precedent. The Prussians cited a 1759 treaty with France that neutralized the wounded and suggested that this accord be extended throughout Europe. The conference ended with praises for Dunant, and the International Committee pledged to serve as a consultative organ for states in setting up the aid societies.152
The 1863 Conference and Russia
The Russians’ participation in the congress came in two forms. First, Miliutin may
not have been sitting at the table, but he made his presence known at the conference. On the first day, he addressed the delegates by letter in which he stated the Russian military had begun to reform its sanitary services and encouraged further international discussion on this theme. He also warned the delegates to avoid any discussion of international law and “leave this part of the question to the initiative of states and their competent organs.”153 At the time,
Russia was in the process of enacting comprehensive reforms of its military sanitary services intended to avoid the disasters of the Crimean War.154 It seems likely that Miliutin thought in
151 Boissier, From Solferino, 75-76.
152 Boissier, From Solferino, 73, 79, 87.
153 Zabrovskii, “Mezhdunarodnaia konferentsiia,” 381.
154 For the most comprehensive treatment of these reforms, see Stoletie voennogo ministerstva, vol. 8, part 4, ed.
D. A. Skalon (St. Petersburg: M. O. Vol’f, 1911), 1-293; John Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia, 1492-1874 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 373; P. F. Gladkikh and O. A. Kriuchkov, Ocherki istorii otechestvennoi voennoi meditsiny, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg: Petropolis, 2009), 42-55.
68
terms similar to the British and French: He wanted to give military reform a chance before he was willing to permit civilians to interfere with his army.
Following this initial conference, Miliutin set up a special committee to review the Geneva project’s designs to use private aid in wartime, and this committee came out against deploying civilian volunteers on the battlefield. The Russians’ dilemma came from having to deal with an uprising in Poland. The discussions in Geneva centered on deploying
nonmilitary actors in conventional wars between European states, but, in Poland, Russia faced civilian insurgents, revolutionaries, and terrorists. Konstantin Nicholaevich, who briefly served as Viceroy of Poland, nearly lost his life to an assassin’s bullet outside a
Warsaw theater the following year. This type of warfare gave the Russians pause to think: Why give Polish terrorists privileges when they certainly would not return the favor?
The Geneva conference’s call to neutralize the wounded and all medical workers,
thereby giving them the status of inviolable nonbelligerent, restricted the methods Russian generals had available to quash rebellion in Poland. If red cross logos awarded anyone free access to the battlefield, then the line between insurgent and aid worker might disappear completely, as the Prussians would discover with French civilians in 1870.155 g dilemma became further complicated by the fact that the Polish lands were split among three European states. Too much trouble might begin calls for intervention, especially if the Russians became the first to violate the Geneva compact. Lastly, Miliutin probably feared what would happen to Russian aid workers if they became too intimate with the military operations in Poland. Radicals and students were the most vociferous opponents of the 1863 campaign in Poland, and their protests encouraged Russian officialdom’s welcoming attitude toward public
155 Best, Humanity, 152.
69
discussion of national affairs to cool after the first round of reforms in the early 1860s.156 As a result of these uncertainties, Miliutin canceled the project to discuss the International Committee’s recommendations, and Russia sent no delegates to the conference that produced
the Geneva Convention of August 1864.
Konstantin Nikolaevich and Elena Pavlovna objected to the minister of war, and their positions found supporters in Russia. M. E. Esakov presented a report on the Exaltation Nurses in the Crimean War as an example for other states to emulate at the fourth session of the 1863 Geneva conference. In this speech, he argued that nurses overcame the military’s
initial ill will and earned the respect of soldiers, society, and the press. Following the war, many of these nurses found positions in military and civilian hospitals, where they continued to hone their skills, he claimed.157
Less than a year later, the translator of Voennyi sbornik’s account of the Geneva conference, Dr. N. Zaborovskii, provided commentary to his summary with which
Konstantin Nikolaevich and Elena Pavlovna would have sympathized. He acknowledged that the Russian military had undertaken medical reforms, but he believed that a relief society would be a welcome addition and set forth guidelines for how Russia should create this society. He suggested that this society should be overseen by trained professionals with access to the collection of medical instruments at the Medical-Surgical Academy, Russia’s school for military doctors. All civilian personnel must be subordinate to the military medical services, he recommended. If the volunteers did not want to work in military hospitals, then
156 Boissier, From Solferino, 89-90; Hutchinson, Champions, 39. On the January Uprising in Poland, See Adam
B. Ulam, Prophets and Conspirators in Prerevolutonary Russia (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1988), 119-26.
70
they should open their own hospitals, as the members of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem had done in Second Schleswig War of 1864. Lastly, he argued that Russia should form a relief society so that it did not have to rely on foreign aid as it had in the Crimean War, when the Russians hired American doctors to supplement overtaxed medical workers.158 He concluded, “Our aid societies can manage without invited or uninvited guests. They should be for the Russian people, and because of this requirement, they will certainly enjoy united support – the more the matter belongs to the people, then the more efficient it is.”159
But advocacy, no matter how committed or loud the apostle, did not translate into sudden changes when it encountered the tsarist bureaucracy. It would take two more events for Russia to charter its own national aid society and adopt the Geneva Convention. First, Prussia’s military machine had to remind everyone how beneficial private aid workers could
be in war. Second, a personal campaign within the Romanov court, the same type of finesse that enabled Elena Pavlovna to found the Exaltation Society, prompted Alexander II to endorse the Russian Red Cross’s establishment in 1867.
Meanwhile, in the West, the 1863 Geneva congress had not bound any states to follow the rules it proposed. None of the delegates possessed the power to enact policies on behalf of their governments, and there was no method for policing these stipulations had they been accepted as law. In the final resolutions of the conference, the delegates only agreed to establish aid committees and accepted the red cross symbol as universal.160
158 Orlando Figes, The Crimean War: A History (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010), 313-14. 159 Zaborovskii, “Mezhdunarodnaia konferentsiia,” 396.
71
Following the congress, Moynier and Dunant knew that they needed to get European states to recognize the neutrality of medical personnel in order to safeguard voluntary workers in future conflicts. Only an international convention of government representatives could transform the suggestions from the 1863 conference into law. The International
Committee spent the early months of 1864 petitioning the Swiss Federal Council to broker an international convention in August 1864. Meanwhile, European states began to set up aid societies, the most significant of which was that formed by Prussia with eighty-five local chapters. By year’s end, a dozen countries responded positively to the invitation for the
convention in Geneva, including Prussia and France.161
The opportunity to test the proposals from the 1863 conference arose when a sudden war between Prussia and Denmark broke out over Schleswig and Holstein in January 1864. Louis Appia, an original member of the International Committee, agreed to serve as an aid liaison to Prussia and toured private hospitals during the conflict. Following the war, Appia published a report that reached two important conclusions for the development of the future Red Cross societies. First, he witnessed civilian aid workers collecting wounded on the battlefield itself and endorsed this type of relief work. Second, the Hamburg committee’s performance in this conflict convinced Appia that Dunant was wrong: Aid committees should prepare for future wars by collecting funds and materials during peacetime and coordinating with general staffs on logistics.162 A major problem that arose during this short war was how to protect medical staff from the enemy. Appia noted in his report that Danish doctors retreated with the army, abandoning patients in field hospitals to advancing Prussian forces.
161 Boissier, From Solferino, 88-89, 105; Hutchinson, Champions, 38-39, 45. 162 Hutchinson, Champions, 62-64.
72
Therefore, a question the 1864 convention would have to address was how to give army doctors the right to practice their craft without undermining military responsibilities.163
In the eighteenth century, Western armies usually neutralized medical services and the wounded at the outset of conflicts, but these agreements were limited to specific wars, as the Prussian arrangement with the French was in 1759. What the Geneva Convention sought to do was to dictate universal standards of behavior for future wars. The August 1864 conference went surprisingly smoothly, and the delegates agreed to neutralize hospitals,