The Big Show in Bololand

100 Years Ago- Herbert Hoover Saved Millions of Soviet Russians

A 1921 poster depicting the Great Famine in the Volga River basin

The Russian famine of 1921–1922, (Povolzhye famine) was a severe famine in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic which began early in the spring of 1921 and lasted through 1922. This famine killed an estimated 5 million people, primarily affecting the Volga and Ural River regions.

MAKSIM GORKY, APPEAL FOR RELIEF. JULY 13, 1921¹

The corn-growing steppes are smitten by crop failure, caused by the drought. The calamity threatens starvation to millions of Russian people. Think of the Russian people’s exhaustion by the war and revolution, which considerably reduced its resistance to disease and its physical endurance. Gloomy days have come for the country of Tolstoy, Dostoevskii, Mendeleev, Pavlov, Mussorgskii, Glinka and other world-prized men and I venture to trust that the cultured European and American people, understanding the tragedy of the Russian people, will immediately succor with bread and medicines.

If humanitarian ideas and feelings faith in whose social import was so shaken by the damnable war and its victors’ vengeance towards the vanquished-if faith in the creative force of these ideas and feelings, I say, must and can be restored, Russia’s misfortune offers humanitarians a splendid opportunity to demonstrate the vitality of humanitarianism. I think particularly warm sympathy in succoring the Russian people must be shown by those who, during the ignominious war, so passionately preached fratricidal hatred, thereby withering the educational efficacy of ideas evolved by mankind in the most arduous labors and so lightly killed by stupidity and cupidity. People who understand the words of agonizing pain will forgive the involuntary bitterness of my words.

I ask all honest European and American people for prompt aid to the Russian people. Give bread and medicine.—²

HERBERT HOOVER TOOK ACTION.

“Bololand”- was the nickname given to Soviet Russia under the Bolsheviks by workers from the U.S. who were part of the Herbert Hoover directed American Relief Administration (ARA) expedition. ARA was established in February 1919 as the U.S. agency designated to administer the relief measures.

The Hoover Institution Library & Archives³ were the resources that made this history possible to be told. ⁴

The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921⁵

Soviet Russia’s Great Famine of 1921 claimed millions of lives: (5 million victims of starvation and famine-related disease). The American Relief Administration (ARA) headed by Herbert Hoover negotiated an agreement to organize relief operations inside Soviet Russia.  Much of the horror and suffering is documented in the extensive photographic record of ARA operations located in the Hoover Archives. ⁶

Maxim Gorky wrote a letter of gratitude to Herbert Hoover in July 1922 on behalf of the Soviet government to praise the relief efforts.

"Your help will enter history as a unique, gigantic achievement, worthy of the greatest glory, which will long remain in the memory of millions of Russians whom you have saved from death." ⁷

Lecture: The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How the United States Saved the Soviet Union from Ruin.⁸

1. American Relief Administration, Bulletin, 1921, Second Series, No. 16 (1 September 1921), p. 2.

2. Gorky’s Appeal. Seventeen Moment in Soviet History.

3. Hoover Institution Library & Archives . Founded by Herbert Hoover in 1919, the Hoover Institution Library & Archives are dedicated to documenting war, revolution, and peace in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With nearly one million volumes and more than six thousand archival collections from 171 countries, Hoover supports a vibrant community of scholars and a broad public interested in the meaning and role of history. Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

4. American Relief Administration Russian operational records .Hoover Institution Library & Archives. During the period of its activity, 1919-1923, offices of the A.R.A. were established in New York, Washington, and major cities of Europe, the Near East, and Soviet Russia. Russian relief was initiated in August 1921 under an agreement with the Soviet government, and by 1923 district missions were established in the capitals of most of the provinces of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, the Ukraine, the Crimea, and the North Caucasus.

5. Patenaude, Bertrand M. The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2002.

6. The Big Show in Bololand. VIDEO-CSPAN. Bertrand Patenaude shares the story of a US famine relief mission to Bolshevik Russia in 1921 that saved millions of lives in his book, The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921.

7. Haven, Cynthia. (2011). “How the U.S. saved a starving Soviet Russia: PBS film highlights Stanford scholar's research on the 1921-23 famine.” Stanford News Service. The world barely remembers the terrible famine in the Soviet Russia – or the American charity that relieved it. Historian Bertrand Patenaude tells how Herbert Hoover saved more lives than any person who has ever lived.

8. Smith, Douglas. RUSSIAN JOB: The Forgotten Story of How America Saved the Soviet Union from Ruin. PICADOR, 2020. Lecture: Douglas Smith, Guggenheim Fellow, historian, U.S. State Department, Soviet Union, Russian affairs analyst for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How the United States Saved the Soviet Union from Ruin.” Smith resurrects the American relief mission from obscurity, taking the reader on an unforgettable journey from the heights of human altruism to the depths of human depravity. The story of the ARA is filled with political intrigue, espionage, the clash of ideologies, violence, adventure, and romance.