Stuart Finkel’s Revolutionary Philanthropy is an important and timely book on the history of political prisoner activism in nineteenth century Russia. It is well-written and deeply researched throughout. Its thickness of description can be overwhelming as Finkel tracks down organizations that were often ephemeral, recounts arcane details, and accounts for all initiatives and networks with almost encyclopedic ambitions. Yet, it is precisely the book’s scrupulousness and impressive source base that makes it a must read for any scholar working on nineteenth century political opposition in Russia. Its potential for comparative reflection makes it also a recommended reading for anybody caring about contemporary Russian political life and its many victims.

The narrative follows a chronological line. Ch. 1 surveys the precedents and foundational models for providing help to political prisoners from the early nineteenth century to the 1870s. Here Finkel describes how an apparatus of narratives, practices, and traditions of aid was established and passed along from the prison guardianship societies to the Decembrists and Polish exiles of the 1830s and the student circles of the 1870s. Among the longstanding features of this type of help, we see tropes such as those of the self-sacrificing woman, the devoted physician, and the political exile as heroic martyr evoking outraged empathy. We also recognize features such as the revolutionary community’s factionalism and its simultaneous claim of non-partisanship in assisting all political prisoners; the vital support coming from the émigrés; the importance of drafting organizational statutes; and the commitment to transparent financials through the publication of reports of income and expenses.

The rest of the book zooms in to the years from the mid-1870s to the late-1880s. This was the time when the populists first adopted the name Red Cross and then various offshoots of it formed both domestically (Chapters 2–4) and abroad (Chapters 5–6) following its model of political philanthropy and enticing the humanitarian sympathies of ever larger publics. Co-opting the name Red Cross, the Russian revolutionaries signaled that the alleviation of political prisoners’ suffering was on par with the humanitarian activity of helping the war wounded. This name appropriation was a powerful move because it equated the moral valence of the two forms of help, furthered tropes of injustice, and aroused empathy for suffering prisoners, all the while creating an explicit correspondence between war as an absolute evil and the malign Romanov autocracy.

In the 1890s, as Finkel discusses in the “Epilogue and Conclusion,” this framework allowed political prisoner activism to mature into “a field of public action and political socialization” (17) that often worked as a conduit to more subversive activities. Later, in the early post-1917 years and then throughout the twentieth century, political activists, defense attorneys, and dissidents engaged in this enduring form of political philanthropy, too, infusing it with new ideas of rights and modifying it to fit the different environments of early Soviet, Stalinist, and late socialist Russia. In fact, this advocacy model became a central tenet of the human rights movement worldwide.

While more empirical than theoretical, the book might nonetheless serve as a springboard for further reflection on the concept of help to political prisoners. The author identifies “political philanthropy” as a “political act” and teases out the “paradox” which, he claims, was inherent in it (12). But what was truly paradoxical about it? Philanthropy itself, while purportedly uninterested in affecting political and social change, performs the clearly political task of upholding the status quo. Similarly, the allegedly a-political, universalist character of the International Committee of the Red Cross in fact hides the organization’s Christian overtones. All such “acts” have political implications, but the liberal lens though which we look at them has taught us to ignore the politics of some while being hypersensitive to others. As the current Russian government produces an increasing number of political prisoners, martyrs, and exiles, it is imperative to think critically about the ways in which we frame humanitarian endeavors to help them. Finkel’s research reveals that, in the best tradition of the political Red Cross, material and moral aid to Putin’s victims is not only urgently needed but also potentially pivotal in avoiding the trap of Russophobia, restoring belief in the ideal of a free Russia, and recognizing the agency of those who fight for political change.