j. -- You raise an interesting point about the 1929 Geneva Convention. In the back of my mind is the thought that there were
two Geneva Conventions in 1929, one dealing with the treatment of POWs and the other dealing with the amelioration of conditions for wounded and sick soldiers on the battlefield. If so, the first is by far the better-known. The language of the 1930 Soviet declaration ("accepting the convention about improving life of the prisoners of war, wounded, and sick in the acting armies") is somewhat ambiguous on this point. When I was researching the subject yesterday, I kept wondering if my memory was being tricky and if there were two 1929 Geneva conventions, but I could not find the amelioration treaty. I'll have a fresh "go" at it today.
(later)
j. -- My memory wasn't playing tricks on me, and you are right. There were two Geneva Conventions of 27 Jul 1929, as described above. The 1929 amelioration convention does not appear in the Avalon Project list of treaties or on many other sites, but the text of that treaty can be located on-line at:
Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/0/09dfb7a98 ... enDocument
and
http://humanrights.indlaw.com/datastore ... Rep134.pdf
The better-known of the two Geneva Conventions of 27 Jul 1929 is captioned "Convention between the United States of America and other powers, relating to prisoners of war," and can be found on-line at:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/geneva02.htm
Mention of the
two treaties of 1929, and distinguishing between them, can be found at:
History of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.ns ... 6600599A60
Final Act of the diplomatic conference, Geneva July 27, 1929
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/1929a.htm
I believe that I saw something listing the USSR as a signatory to the 1929 Geneva amelioration treaty. As the day progresses I'll try to find the reference and post it. That may have been the subject of the 1930 Soviet declaration, rather than the 1929 treatment of POWs convention, and the ambiguity of the language in the declaration, and the relative obscurity of the second 1929 amelioration treaty may have thrown us all off.