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Book Launch -- <i>The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921</i>

Bertrand Patenaude, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, and former Title VIII-Supported Research Scholar, Kennan Institute

Date & Time

Monday
Mar. 29, 2004
10:00am – 11:00am ET

Overview

At a recent Kennan Institute event, Bertrand Patenaude, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and former Title VIII-Supported Research Scholar, Kennan Institute, presented his book, The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921, emphasizing that it is a story of exceptional Americans in addition to a historical account of the Soviet famine of 1921.

Patenaude began his presentation by noting that there is no single comprehensive study of the Soviet famine of 1921. Before the famine of 1932-33, the 1921 famine was called "the Great Famine." Afterwards, he said, the 1932-33 famine went on to receive greater historical notoriety as a stark episode of Stalinist repression and as the subject of a debate over whether it constituted genocide against the Ukrainian population.

Patenaude stated that in 1921, after seven years of war and civil war, twenty-five million people were threatened with starvation along the Volga River and in Southern Ukraine. The Soviet government could not cope with the impending calamity, and in the summer of 1921, the American Relief Administration (ARA) headed by Herbert Hoover was invited in to stave off disaster. There are no reliable statistics to document how many perished or how many were saved. However, Patenaude continued, the best estimates are that between five and ten million people died in the famine, and he noted that in 1922 American kitchens were feeding eleven million people a day. Perhaps more important than the food the ARA brought were the seeds they delivered throughout the area that broke the back of the famine and saved the harvest of 1922.

The history of the famine comprises only one of four sections of the book, noted Patenaude. The remaining three deal with the challenges facing the relief effort and the stories of the ARA staff, who were mainly World War I veterans looking to extend their adventures in Europe.

The first challenge Patenaude described concerned the individual workers. Many of the ARA workers confronted by the starving villagers experienced "famine shock," a term derived from "shell shock." These relief workers were stretched thin across Soviet Russia: while they hired many thousands of local citizens, only 300 Americans served in during ARA's two year mission, with a maximum of 199 workers at one time. The second obstacle Patenaude documented is the obstructionism of the Soviet government, which feared that the ARA intended to smuggle in arms and use "food as a weapon" to strengthen anti-Soviet forces. The ARA did neither, but Hoover, a leading anti-Communist, did believe that by feeding the people he would strengthen them to roll back Communism. The third obstacle, according to Patenaude, was the population itself. The Americans were prepared for food riots, but instead found the population to be passive and fatalistic, believing the famine to be a divine punishment and occasionally offended by the business-like American approach.

Patenaude concluded by describing how the 1921 famine slipped into relative historical obscurity. From the Soviet side, the ARA was dismissed as attempted espionage and sabotage in the guise of philanthropy, and was otherwise largely ignored. From the American side, the Great Depression so ruined the reputation of Hoover that his heroic efforts during the famine, and the ARA itself, were tainted.

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Kennan Institute

The Kennan Institute is the premier US center for advanced research on Russia and Eurasia and the oldest and largest regional program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Kennan Institute is committed to improving American understanding of Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the surrounding region though research and exchange.  Read more

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