The Russian Job

August 5, 2019
Smith (Rasputin) delivers a narrowly focused history of one program of the American Relief Administration, a “quasi-intelligence and diplomatic organization” that, during the 1921–1923 famine in the Soviet Union, operated soup kitchens and fed over 10 million people. As starvation, sickness, and political terror gripped the fledgling Soviet Union and prompted the writer Maxim Gorky to appeal to “all honest European and American people” to send food and medicine, workers’ strikes and anarchists’ bombs in the United States had the American government believing Bolshevism was invading the West. Some in Congress believed a relief effort would weaken the Bolshevik government, while others were motivated by humanitarian concerns; ultimately, the program was mobilized. Nearly 400 Americans worked in Russia during the two years, and Smith tells the story from their point of view, drawing on their diaries, letters, reports, and photographs. (Numerous gruesome stories and photos of cannibalism and starvation are included.) His prose moves at a fast clip and takes a matter-of-fact tone about the horrors of the famine. Not all readers may buy the claim that the Soviet Union would have collapsed without this intervention, but this is an intriguing window onto the humanitarian work of the past. Photos.

October 1, 2019

Smith's latest (after Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs) focuses on a little-known period of Russian-American cooperation that saved millions of lives, tracing the story of the American Relief Administration during the early 1920s, led by Herbert Hoover, and its efforts to aid a famine-stricken Soviet Union. After the strife of the Bolshevik revolution, in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Civil War, food and medicine in Soviet Russia were scarce, particularly for people in rural areas. Yet leaders were reluctant to admit the difficulties so many civilians faced. A letter sent by writer Maxim Gorky, asking for assistance, that reached President Woodrow Wilson in 1921 initiated efforts to aid the Soviet Union. "The Russian Job," told through letters and diaries of young American men who served in World War I, who then traveled to the Soviet Union to distribute food and medical help, makes for a fascinating and harrowing tale. VERDICT For readers with an interest in the beginnings of the Soviet period and the collaboration between two nations often at odds with each other.--Amy Lewontin, Northeastern Univ. Lib., Boston

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2019
The hair-raising account of a great humanitarian act in which the United States provided vital assistance to the Soviet Union. Historian and translator Smith (Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs, 2016) reminds readers that World War I and civil war devastated Russian agriculture because the fighting armies lived off the land. By 1920, the Bolsheviks had largely won, but the government continued to forcibly extract grain from the peasants. Then the rains stopped. At first, Lenin "welcomed the famine, since he believed it would destroy the people's faith in God and the tsar. Revolution, not charity, would save the peasants, he said." By the summer, faced with mass starvation and violence, he changed his mind. Many philanthropists and international charities responded to pleas for help, but only one organization had the immense resources required: the American Relief Administration, led by Herbert Hoover, who had already impressed the world with his relief of mass starvation in Belgium and northern France during WWI and then again in Europe after the armistice. A successful businessman, Hoover employed the same talents to organize a vast enterprise led by loyal underlings who oversaw the distribution chain, from docks to warehouses to transportation to the soup kitchens. A few Soviet leaders were congenial, but most believed that the ARA was a nefarious capitalist plot. Secret police harassed the Americans and arrested Russian employees but sometimes, unpredictably, helped by cutting through red tape. Local officials were usually grateful. Infrastructure, housing, sanitation, and disease were terrible, far worse than in Europe. In an often agonizing but necessary book, the author includes letters and anecdotes by participants as well as often horrific photographs, all of which tell a grim story. Starving people do not overthrow governments, so it's unlikely American aid saved the Soviet Union, but it was a magnificent achievement--and Smith adeptly navigates all elements of the story. Except for Hoover biographers, American scholars pay little attention to this episode; it quickly vanished from Russian history. Although the catastrophic Russian famine and American relief efforts are not completely forgotten, this expert account deserves a large readership.

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October 1, 2019
Smith (Rasputin, 2016) chronicles the challenges and complexities of an American famine-relief program in 1920s Russia. Although later obscured by other atrocities, the Povolzhye famine remains one of the twentieth century's darkest moments, devastating a Russian heartland that was still reeling from the Great War and the Bolshevik Revolution. The American Relief Association, led by food czar and future president Herbert Hoover, mobilized to ship U.S. food to starving Russians. Its operatives included J. Rives Childs, a Wilsonian idealist seeking spirited adventure in Russia; Frank Golder, a Harvard-educated Russia scholar; and William Kelly, a hard-driven, no-nonsense military man. Smith details the apocalypse the ARA encountered?a hellscape of frozen corpses, contagious disease, abandoned children, and even cannibalism?and the orchestration of the massive aid effort, which fed ten million people over a million square miles of remote territory. It was a success, even if its legacy was blurred by politics and allegations of espionage. But Smith's true fascination may be the way the program opened the eyes of its organizers, testing their convictions and nudging them toward more nuanced impressions of Russia.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)