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Based on the publications of «Ural Medical Journal» (1928-1931), the article analyzes the features and main activities of the Ural branch of the Russian Red Cross Society (RRCS) at the turn of the 1920s-1930s. Two main areas of activity of the Red Cross on the Urals during the period under study were identified: 1) military and sanitary work (organization of first aid circles and squads, sanitary columns, courses of “reserve nurses”) and 2) medical and sanitary work (creation of primary points of the “health service”, nurseries, playgrounds, “medical and nutritional”, eye and venereal points, women's rural clinics, etc.). At the same time, attempts to ensure the mass character of the organization while pursuing a hard “class” line to get rid of non-proletarian elements gave rise to bureaucratization and formalism of the activities of the RRCS, reflected, in particular, in setting many global tasks with insufficient material and human resources for their implementation. In general, the RRCS, along with other public organizations created during the Soviet period, was considered primarily as a tool for the political education of the masses, focused on the goals of socialist construction.