From Grassroots Humanitarianism to Mutual Aid: Citizen Responses in Poland and the Czech Republic to Russia’s War in Ukraine

Abstract

Russia’s full-blown war in Ukraine created an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Europe. By the end of 2022, over eight million Ukrainians had become refugees throughout Europe, with more than 11 million crossing Ukraine’s borders (UNHCR Operational Data Portal). The Ukrainians have fled to many countries, but Poland and the Czech Republic have received some of the largest numbers of Ukrainian individuals seeking protection. The multilayered response to this influx of people has been impressive and surprising, with ordinary individuals showing up at the border to provide food and transportation while ordinary citizens and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) mobilized to create local systems of humanitarian assistance. This paper explores grassroots citizens’ aid in Poland and the Czech Republic from February 2022 until August 2024. It argues that in both countries, private individuals and small volunteer-run groups organized creative grassroots initiatives that went beyond providing immediate material assistance. Solidarity with Ukrainians also fueled citizen-led mutual aid and transformative spaces of care aimed at altering existing institutions and practices and integrating Ukrainians.

Keywords

grassroots humanitarianism, mutual aid, voluntarism, Ukrainian refugees, Poland, the Czech Republic

Author Biography

Simona Fojtova

Simona Fojtová is a Professor and the Director of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. Her research focuses on issues of gender and sexuality and activism in Central and Eastern Europe. Her work has appeared in Aspasia, Contemporary Literature, the NWSA Journal, the Journal of Lesbian Studies, and Queer Visibility in Post-socialist Cultures. She has also contributed two chapters to Czech Feminisms: Perspectives on Gender in East Central Europe, edited by Jiřina Šiklová and Iveta Jusová, which earned the 2017 Heldt Prize for best book in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian Women’s and Gender Studies.

Patrice McMahon

Patrice McMahon is a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow based at the Community of Democracies in Poland. She is a Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) in the United States. She is currently writing a book on Polish humanitarianism, Ordinary People, with a grant from the National Endowment for Humanities. Her research focuses on humanitarian affairs, peacebuilding, civil society activism, and U.S. foreign policy. Most recently, she was the co-author and co-editor of Activism in Hard Times in Central and Eastern Europe: People Power (Routledge Press). Her research has appeared in various publications, including Foreign Affairs, Political Science Quarterly, Human Rights Quarterly, East European Politics and Societies, Democratization, and Ethnopolitics.

Hana Waisserova

Hana Waisserová is an associate professor of practice of Czech and Central European Studies and an affiliate of the Harris Centre for Judaic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She co-authored a book titled Women’s Artistic Dissent. Repelling Totalitarianism in Pre-1989 Czechoslovakia (Lexington Books, 2023) and contributed to Modern Czech Literature: Writing in Times of Political Trauma (Vernon Press, 2024). Her research concerns South Asian and Central European women's transnational literature, women’s totalitarian experiences, women dissidents and their activism, medieval Czech literature, and Czech-American culture in Nebraska. Her research appeared in Litteraria Pragensia, Pandanus, Kosmas, Czechoslovak and Central European Journal, Czech Language News, Literature, Media and Cultural Studies, American and British Studies Annual, Great Plains Quarterly, and Fema.