American Politics & Adventure - The Great Russian Famine of 1921

• published: 13 Nov 2014
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The little-known story of the American effort to relieve starvation in the new Soviet Russia in 1921, This documentary is about the worst natural disaster in Europe since the Black Plague in the Middle Ages. Five million Soviet citizens died. Half a world away, Americans responded with a massive two-year relief campaign, championed by Herbert Hoover, director of the American Relief Administration and its efforts to distribute food during the Great Russian Famine of 1921. The Russian famine of 1921, also known as Povolzhye famine, which began in the early spring of that year and lasted through 1922, was a severe famine that occurred in Bolshevik Russia. The famine, which killed an estimated 6 million, affected mostly the Volga and Ural River region. The famine resulted from the combined effect of economic disturbance, started during World War I, and continued through theRussian Civil War. One of Russia's intermittent droughts that occurred in 1921 aggravated the situation to the level of the national catastrophe. Hunger was so severe that it was doubtful that seed-grain would be sown rather than eaten. At one point, relief agencies had to give grain to the railroad staff to get their supplies moved. The Bolsheviks seized church property and, with its wealth, made use of one million gold roubles in order to give food to the famine victims. Before the famine began, Russia had suffered six and a half years of the First World War and the Civil Wars of 1918–20, many of the conflicts fought inside Russia. Before the famine, all sides in the Russian Civil Wars of 1918–21 — the Bolsheviks, the Whites, the Anarchists, the seceding nationalities — had provisioned themselves by the ancient method of "living off the land": they seized food from those who grew it, gave it to their armies and supporters, and denied it to their enemies. The Bolshevik government had requisitioned supplies from the peasantry for little or nothing in exchange. This led peasants to drastically reduce their crop production. According to the official Bolshevik position, which is still maintained by some modern Marxists, the rich peasants (kulaks) withheld their surplus grain in order to preserve their lives; statistics indicate that most of the grain and the other food supplies passed through the black market. The Bolsheviks believed peasants were actively trying to undermine the war effort. The Black Book of Communism claims that Lenin ordered the seizure of the food peasants had grown for their own subsistence and their seed grain in retaliation for this "sabotage," leading to widespread peasant revolts. In 1920, Lenin had ordered increased emphasis on food requisitioning from the peasantry. Aid from outside Russia was initially rejected. The American Relief Administration (ARA), which Herbert Hoover had formed to help the starvation of World War I, had offered assistance to Lenin in 1919, on condition that they have full say over the Russian railway network and hand out food impartially to all. Lenin refused this as interference in Russian internal affairs. Lenin was eventually convinced — by this famine, the Kronstadt rebellion, large scale peasant uprisings such as the Tambov rebellion, and the failure of a German general strike — to reverse his policy at home and abroad. He decreed the New Economic Policy on March 15, 1921. The famine also helped produce an opening to the West: Lenin allowed relief organizations to bring aid, this time. War relief was no longer required in Western Europe, and the ARA had an organization set up in Poland, relieving the Polish famine which had begun in the winter of 1919–20. When a devastating famine descended on Soviet Russia in 1921 the United States responded with a massive two-year relief campaign that battled starvation and disease and saved millions of lives. By summer 1922 American kitchens were feeding nearly eleven million Soviet citizens a day. At the time the American rescue operation was hailed as "the beau geste of the twentieth century." The American expedition took place as the embers of the 1917 Russian Revolution still smoldered. The nearly 300 American relief workers most of them veterans of World War I were the first group of outsiders to break through Russia's isolation and to witness and record the impact of the revolution. This documentary sets a riveting story of American engagement with a distant and desperate people-an engagement hailed for its efficiency grit and generosity-within the larger story of the Russian Revolution and the roots of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry that would dominate the second half of the twentieth century.