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Benjamin M. Weissman, Rutgers University
Newark, New Jersey
Hoover Institution Publications 134
Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University
Stanford, California 1974
Library of Congress Card Number 73-75888
International Standard Book Number 0-8179-1341-6
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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 form 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,
the 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
during World War I and in feeding millions of Europeans during the
Armistice.
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Hoover was also a retired capitalist of considerable wealth, a champion
of Republic liberalism, and a leading opponent of recognition of Soviet
Russia. Lenin--head of the Soviet government, and a living symbol of
world revolution--was the antithesis of ARA's Chief. This book studies
the personalities, motives, and modi operandi of these two celebrated
figures, both as individuals 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 as
anti-Soviet
intervention entirely devoid of humanitarian purpose. "Herbert Hoover
and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia" is the first major attempts 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
and 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.
Benjamin Weissman is Assistant Professor of Political Science at
Rutgers University. In addition to contributing to such scholarly
journals as the Slavic Review and the Russian Review, he has
done free-lance writing and has worked on the old "New York
Sunday News."
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Politics of Famine Relief
2. The Roles of Herbert Hoover
3. Confrontation at Riga
4. The Unique Encounter
5. Expansion of the Mission
6. The Politics of Retreat
7. Disengagement with Russia
8. The Aftermath
9. Summary and Conclusions
Bibliography
Notes
Index
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