Donate Blood–Save Lives! Blood Donation in the Czechoslovak and Polish Red Cross

Blood donation has long been a traditional task of national Red Cross societies, often framed by imagery of blood, nation, and humanity to mobilize voluntary donors. This was also the case with the Czechoslovak Red Cross, Československý červený kříž, and the Polish Red Cross, Polski Czerwony Krzyż, for which the mass mobilization of blood donors and socialist ideology intertwined throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Healthcare in both countries relied heavily on blood donations organized by the Red Cross during this period, with both organizations using this role to legitimize themselves within their respective state socialist systems. For the Czechoslovak and Polish communist parties, a functional national Red Cross society symbolized the modernity and progressiveness of socialism, particularly on the international stage of the humanitarian movement. This article closely examines the period following the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia (1970s) and the period of martial law in Poland (1981–83), both of which serve as a useful lens for understanding how supposedly apolitical Red Cross societies helped stabilize socialist rule, but at the same time navigated their potential to destabilize it.

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