Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia, 1921–1923

Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia, 1921–1923
Author: Benjamin M. Weissman
Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1974-06-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780817913434

In 1921 one of the most devastating famines in history threatened the lives of millions of Russians as well as the continuance of Soviet rule. Responding to a plea for help from the Soviet government, the American Relief Administration (ARA) agreed to provide famine relief in the stricken areas. The ARA was a private relief organization headed by Herbert Hoover, then U.S. secretary of commerce and one of the best-known Americans of his time for his spectacular success in rescuing the population of Belgium from starvation during World War I and in feeding millions of Europeans during the Armistice. Hoover was also a retired capitalist of considerable wealth, a champion of Republican liberalism, and a leading opponent of recognition of Soviet Russia. Lenin—head of the Soviet government, leader of the Bolshevik party, and living symbol of world revolution—was the antithesis of the ARA's chief. This book studies the personalities, motives, and modi operandi of these two celebrated figures, both as individuals and as representatives of their societies. At the same time it considers the relief mission itself, which has been the subject of continuing controversy for fifty years. Its partisans see it as a charitable, nonpolitical enterprise, while its enemies judge it an anti-Soviet intervention entirely devoid of humanitarian purpose. Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief for Soviet Russia is the first major attempt by an American scholar to reexamine the ARA mission, on the basis of much material made available since the ARA's 1927 official history. What emerges is, on the one hand, a painstaking examination of the historical details of ARA's mission and, on the other hand, a philosophic essay relating the ARA to broader questions of U.S.-Soviet relations the ideological antitheses of Hoover and Lenin. The author concludes that both sides overcame their ideological antagonisms and made possible a spectacularly successful relief mission that inspired the vain hope that a new era in Soviet-American relations had begun.

Humanitarianism in the Modern World

Humanitarianism in the Modern World
Author: Norbert Götz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2020-07-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108493521

A fresh look at two centuries of humanitarian history through a moral economy approach focusing on appeals, allocation, and accounting.

The Demands of Humanity

The Demands of Humanity
Author: Gaines M. Foster
Publisher:
Total Pages: 202
Release: 1983
Genre: Civil defense
ISBN:

The contribution of Army doctors, nurses, and medical corpsmen during disaster situations, with an account of the origin and development of the Army2s relief mission through 1976.

The Lysenko Controversy as a Global Phenomenon, Volume 1

The Lysenko Controversy as a Global Phenomenon, Volume 1
Author: William deJong-Lambert
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2017-01-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 3319391763

This volume covers the global history of the Lysenko controversy, while exploring in greater depth the background of D. Lysenko’s career and influence in the USSR. By presenting the rise and fall of T.D. Lysenko in a variety of aspects—his influence upon art, unrecognized predecessors, and the extent to which genetics continued in the USSR even while he was in power, and the revival of his reputation today—the authors provide a fresh perspective on one of the most notorious episodes in the history of science.

Friends Or Foes?

Friends Or Foes?
Author: Norman E. Saul
Publisher:
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN:

With Friends or Foes? Norman Saul continues his monumental multivolume magnum opus on U.S.-Russian relations over the course of 200 years. This fourth volume provides the first comprehensive study in any language of an era that shaped the rest of the century and captures the major changes in relations between two nations on the verge of becoming dominant global powers. Among other things, Saul examines the rationale for America's failure to recognize the Soviet government through the early 1930s, analyzing the impact of the Red Scare and the roles of the State Department, Russian migrs, religious groups, and key individuals—like Charles Evans Hughes, Robert Kelley, Herbert Hoover, Boris Skvirsky, Olga Kameneva, and Maxim Litvinov—on the policy process. In addition, he recalls the American Relief Administration's gigantic effort to help Russian peasants and garners new material from American business records on concession arrangements and commerce and on Soviet responses during the first Five Year Plan. He also records travelers' impressions, cultural exchange, and the role of academia in each country—particularly the contribution of Russian émigré scholars to American education and the contributions of American journalists in Russia. Saul also reveals the tendency on both sides to preserve an atmosphere of secrecy, conducting business behind closed doors and rarely on paper. His prodigious research in the Hoover Presidential Library, the Franklin Roosevelt Library, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University-incorporating overlooked Diplomat Post Records and featuring an interview with George Kennan on his diplomatic role—has yielded a wealth of new insights into what really happened during a period in the history of the relations between the two countries that remains mysterious and controversial. Breaking new ground in diplomatic, economic, social, and cultural history, Saul's book illuminates both the mutual fascination that briefly permitted peaceful coexistence (and eventual alliance) and the ideological battles that ultimately led to the Cold War.

Famine in European History

Famine in European History
Author: Guido Alfani
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2017-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107179939

The first systematic study of famine in all parts of Europe from the Middle Ages to present. It compares the characteristics, consequences and causes of famine in regional case studies by leading experts to form a comprehensive picture of when and why food security across the continent became a critical issue.

The Politics of Service

The Politics of Service
Author: Daniel Maul
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2024-07-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 311067579X

This book provides the first comprehensive history of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the central aid agency of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers, from 1917 to 1945. Implying a thoroughly transnational approach, it sheds a light on the important role American Quakers played in the emergence of a humanitarian sector both within the USA and beyond. Through the Quaker lens the book adresses important tensions inherent to the history of humanitarianism in the 20th century: Following the AFSCs aid operations from the First World War, through post-war Germany and Soviet Russia to the Spanish Civil War and into the Second World War, it deals with the AFSC’s conflicting roles as a specifically American aid organization on the one hand and its position within transnational religious and pacifist networks on the other and it opens a window to processes of professionalization, the development of a humanitarian “market place” and the complex relationship of religious and secular strands in the history of international relief.