Famine and Relief

In 1921, Russia was in a catastrophic state. After being ravaged by the First World War, two revolutions, the Civil War, a typhus epidemic, and the Bolsheviks’ insane economic policies, the country was in the grip of famine. Victims numbered in the millions and people were growing more desperate by the day.

As early as 1919, the American Relief Administration, or ARA, had offered the Soviet government aid for famine victims. There was just one condition: the humanitarian organization itself would decide where, to whom, and in what quantities aid would be distributed, and the political predilections of the recipients would be left out of the equation. The Bolsheviks refused.

It should be mentioned that, around the same time, one of the leaders of the White movement, General Denikin, expressed indignation at the idea that the Americans would help famine victims in Red-held territory. This is astounding – Denikin was a decent man, not cruel by temperament. Among the Bolshevik leadership as well, far from everyone was heartless. Didn’t they realize what would happen to people if food aid was rejected at a time when thousands upon thousands of people were being turned into walking skeletons, plagued by lice, hunger, turmoil, and fear?

By 1921, however, General Denikin was already in emigration and the Whites were losing ground. The Bolsheviks were in control of most of Russia. This did nothing to reduce the problem of hunger. The Bolsheviks remained steadfast in their rejection of economic realities, believing that if only private property and acquisitiveness could be wiped out, everyone would joyously toil and hunger would be vanquished.

In May 1921, with millions starving and the situation in the Volga River region critical, Lenin was still calling on the Cheka to combat meshochnichestvo – from the Russian word for bag, meshok, this was the phenomenon of people engaging in small-scale trade, usually carrying bags of goods either from the countryside (where there was at least some food) to the city (where manufactured items were more likely to be available), or more generally, people fleeing the hardest hit areas, their possessions loaded in bags. In the Volga region, famine victims literally stormed trains they believed were carrying grain. Many of these desperate, emaciated people were shot down by the guards.

Fortunately, not everyone was blinded by ideological insanity. In July of 1921, Maxim Gorky wrote an appeal “To all honest people” pleading for aid to the hungry. Herbert Hoover, who at the time was heading the American Relief Administration and doing a brilliant job at organizing humanitarian aid to postwar Europe, immediately responded. He was able to win Congress over to the idea of helping Russia, although American politicians were not exactly eager to help the Bolsheviks, and in August of 1921, in Riga, negotiations began between representatives of ARA and the Soviet government.

The Bolsheviks were again infuriated by ARA’s demands. First of all, the Soviet government was required to officially request aid – that felt humiliating. Second, it had to recognize that Hoover was acting as a private party, the head of a humanitarian organization, rather than as a representative of the United States, a country that did not, at the time, have diplomatic relations with Russia (that did not happen until 1933). And finally, the greatest affront, ARA staff would not be answerable to Soviet authorities: they would have to be allowed to travel freely and operate independently.

Given the circumstances, it was crucial that this aid be accepted immediately – it was a matter of life and death. But Lenin was still not ready to concede:

“A convoluted game is being played here. America, Hoover, and the League of Nations Council are being extraordinarily underhanded. Hoover should be punished, publicly slapped in the face for all the world to see, and the League of Nations Council also. This is very hard to do, but it must be done.”

Somehow these words are more hair-raising than the many calls for violence that flowed from “Grandfather Lenin’s” pen. Hundreds of thousands of children were bloated with hunger and his main concern was giving Hoover a public face slapping!

Fortunately, even Lenin finally recognized that he had no choice. On August 20, 1921, an agreement was signed in Riga. ARA began to deliver aid to children and the sick, and it was indeed ARA staff that performed the health inspections and decided how best to organize feeding stations. One disturbing detail was the stipulation that children would eat the food provided right in the dining facilities rather than take it with them – the danger that these precious morsels would be snatched away by adults was too great.

ARA fed thousands of children, set up dining facilities in provinces gripped by famine, and carried out vaccination programs to ease the epidemics ravaging the weakened population. The government, meanwhile, continued to worry that anti-famine measures would pose a challenge to Soviet rule.

Another organization fighting famine was Pomgol – an abbreviation of “pomoshch golodayushchim” or “aid to the starving.” It had been created by prominent Russian cultural and religious figures but was disbanded in the autumn of 1921 and its leadership was arrested. Only the intervention of Fridtjof Nansen, who was also involved in famine relief, saved them from being shot, but not from being expelled from the country. (At the time, Nansen was the League of Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees, but he also had a longstanding relationship with Russia and a degree of popularity in the country dating back to his explorations of Siberia before the revolution.) Across the country, the Russian Orthodox Church worked to collect resources to help the starving. From the government’s perspective, letting priests deliver aid was unacceptable. A better approach was to confiscate church valuables and deliver aid themselves.

The people carrying out ARA’s work did not have an easy time of it either. They were detained, arrested, and faced interference in their operations, but they continued to feed people and save lives.

The ARA episode was not the only time the United States stepped in to provide invaluable help to the people of Russia. How many lives were saved by the Lend Lease program during the Second World War? It is hard to come by precise figures, but it was surely many thousands.

The fact that, today, there is never any mention of ARA or Herbert Hoover feels somehow painful and shameful. And there seems to be a disdainful attitude toward Lend Lease. What’s the big deal about a few cans of SPAM? In fact, that canned meat saved lives, and there was also medicine, automobiles, and much else.

And once again, we’re being told: no other country holds a candle to us, we’re not afraid of anyone and we don’t need help from anyone. But do we ever need help, and not just in cases when people are starving to death in the Volga region. International relief is based on a universal truth: all human beings are the same, all human life is precious, and all peoples need help from time to time. This is the most important lesson humankind can learn. Some people still don’t get it.