This event. Dr. Smith dir. Markert good evening and welcome. I know many of you know already, but in case we have not met, my markert and i am the executive director here. Smith,ome back douglas longtime friend of hillwood and author of the book, the russian job. You may have noticed that the theater looks a little different tonight. I am very pleased to welcome cspan. While this is their very first time at hillwood, it is not the first time our lectures are accessible to folks at home. Many of our fantastic programs are available on the Hillwood MuseumYoutube Channel so check that out in case you missed something or want to see something again. Before we continue, i know you know what i am going to say next. Make sure you have silenced anything that chirps, barks, or beeps. You may know that marjorie post again her russian collection began her russian collection while she was posted to moscow in 1937 and 1938. She was dedicated to building the most comprehensive collection of building soviet imperial art outside of russia. Her passion inspired and educated the public and she made plans for hillwood to became become a museum. Generosity, public service, family, and lush gardens as well as the new biography marjorie meriwether post by Estella Chung inspired this years holiday decorations. I invite each of you to share hillwood with friends and family during the Holiday Season for what we are calling a very meriwether christmas. Towill raise a glass hillwood members, which i know most of you already are at our annual numbers open house on december 3. Hillwood memberships are a perfect gift for everyone you know. Now it is my great pleasure to introduce douglas smith. Doug is an awardwinning historian, translator, author and his books have been translated into several wedges. He has written for the New York Times into the wall street journal and has appeared in documentaries with National Geographic and netflix. Before becoming a historian, he worked for the u. S. State department in the soviet union as a Russian Affairs analyst. He is a frequent guest here although it has been nearly three years since his last lecture. I am delighted to have him back. I want to thank especially international councilmembers and hosting himends for this evening. Please join me in welcoming douglas smith. [applause] dr. Smith thank you, kate for that nice introduction. It is wonderful to be back at hillwood. I am trying to remember if this is my fourth or fifth time to give a talk. I think of myself as a repeat offender but only in the best sense. Helpingo thank you for to put this together with all the organizational skills. To cspan and richard for wanting to tape this tonight. S need to thank my localhost who have been taking good care of me. Maybe last tonight, too good of care. If i am incoherent, it is not my fault. There are a lot of demands on our time. I know disney is now streaming live. [laughter] dr. Smith to come out and learn about a russian fan famine shows real dedication. I am going to talk for 30 minutes or so and then i am happy to open it up to whatever questions people might have. What i want to talk about tonight was arguably one of the noblest acts in American History yet sadly something that few of us seem to remember or have even heard about, a fact that could also be said about russia itself. At its heart, it is a story of charity and compassion, two things that i would say are always in short supply and in recent days in particular. On the 13th of july 1921, the russian writer maxim gorky penned an appeal to the world entitled to all honest people. Gloomy days have, for the land of tolstoy. Russias misfortunes offer humanitarians a splendid opportunity to demonstrate the vitality of humanitarianism. I ask all honest europeans and americans for prompt aid to the russian people. Give bread and medicine. World inf the 1921, one of the worst famines in World History struck russia. There were several causes for the famine. In the shortterm, it was precipitated by two horrible droughts in 1920 and 1921 that depth decimated the harvests. There were more important factors that led to the famine. There had been seven years in russia of unending wars and revolution getting with 1914 and 21917tart of world war i, when we had two revolutions to 1917 when we had two revolutions back to back. The bolshevik seizure of power led to a civil war that lasted until 1920. Both the reds and whites laid waste to the russian countryside and spread terror wherever they went. Lennon had long understood the connection between power and food. In 1891, afore similar famine gripped russia. Many an educated society at the time led by the example of leo tolstoy organized it to offer help to the starving peasantry but not lenin. He did not believe in charity. He believed the only answer for the peasants was revolution. He said at the time the overthrow of the on arc, this bulwark of the landowners is their only hope for an escape for hunger and unending poverty. Was convinced hunger could be used as a tool to undermine czarist rule and lead to revolution. Now that the bolsheviks were in power, they waged a war on the peasants. They forced peasants to hand over grain at gunpoint. They needed the grain to feed red army soldiers. The peasants obviously resisted. They hid grain down the well or in fake walls. They even created a peasant army to try to fight back. They also reduced to the amount of land on under cultivation, meaning there were no reserves famine hit. Lenin was terrified that without food, the government would collapse. There would be no more interest in the bolshevik government. He set up the time, if there is a harvest, then everyone will hunger a little and the government will be saved. Otherwise, since we cannot take anything from people who do not have the means of satisfying their own hunger, the government will perish. In westhoover was born 1874 to awa in 19 family of quakers. He was sent off to live with an uncle in oregon after being orphaned. The891, he enrolled in first class at Stanford University and graduated with a degree in geology. He was an average student with average grades and left with average expectations. None of his fellow students held out much hope for a right future for Herbert Hoover. He went off first to the gold mines of the australian outbreak , a place he described as pure hell before moving to china. Quickly he rose the ranks of the International Mining business. He had a rare talent as an administrator and he had a way of finding new opportunities no one had seen before, of turning around failing operations and making a lot of money. I 1914, he was the head of his own International Firms offices around the world. He was extremely wealthy, successful, that he was also getting bored. The fun had gone out of the game. World war i gave him the opportunity to try something new. After germany invaded belgium, starvation faced the entire country. Hoover realized someone had to step in and try to save the country, so he created something known as the committee for the relief of belgium that ended up feeding millions during world war i and became known as the savior of belgium. In the u. S. , then president Woodrow Wilson appointed him head of the u. S. Food administration based on his success in belgium. The war, he pushed president wilson to create an Organization Called the American Relief administration within appropriation of 100 million that would be used to feed were war ravished europe. Hoover was secretary of commerce in the warren g. Harding administration and as secretary of commerce, on july 22 of that year, he read in an american newspaper, a publication of maxim gorkys appeal to the world. He sprang into action and cabled back to gorky, yes, the americans would come. Abouterybody was excited the idea of American Relief to read russia. Russia. To red argued against his request for more money to go help starving people on the others of the world. Some criticism came from the political left who said hoover was not really interested in aid but was coming up with a scheme for counterrevolution. They insisted the only way soviet russia could be helped was through political recognition by the United States government. Most of the criticism came from the right. At some insisted there was no real needed to go help russia. In fact, what hoover was trying to do was help American Farmers who had produced too much grain and was looking for the government to buy it off their hands. Others insisted charity needed to begin at home. Wehad enough poor, hungry had enough poor, hungry people in the u. S. Henry ford put out his own spin on why we should not help and insisted that the ara was controlled by jews and bolsheviks. We know about henry ford. Others insisted that the russians were starving due to their own incompetence, their own stupidity and that in fact the best thing was to let the russians starve for this would destroy bolshevism once and for all. Of thesetted back all arguments against it doing something. He said, the sole object of relief should be humanity. It should have no other political objective other than the maintenance of life and order. He agreed that russia was a meat murderous tyranny but the u. S. Nevertheless had a humanitarian obligation. He said that in a country like the u. S. , which could spend 1 billion a year on what he described as tobacco and cosmetics, an additional 1 million to the ara would not be felt. Here is a photograph of one of the ara warehouses with american grain getting ready to be shift shipped overseas to russia. It was not just some in the u. S. Who were wary of hoover and his intentions. And the bolsheviks had led a revolution to do away with the old economic political order and here they were contemplating letting one of the Great American capitalists into their country at their weakest moment. Some were convinced of that the ara led by hoover was nothing but a trojan horse that would lead to the overthrow of their government. Lenin ordered strict surveillance placed over all americans preparing to come to russia. He tasked to the new tory Us Secret Police secret police who would later become known as the kgb to infiltrate the ara as soon as they arrived and place agents inside. Nevertheless they felt he felt they had to agree to the americans terms. The First Americans arrived in moscow on the 27th a guest, 1921 1921. August, the first ara kitchen opened in petrograd. Four daysfter that after that, a second kitchen opened in moscow. This is arguably the most spectacular of all the ara feeding locations. Some of you may be recognize it. This is the alexander palace outside st. Petersburg, home of russias czars. This was the last home for nicholas and alexandra and their palace children. This was feeding at one point 2000 people a day. According to ara records, among the kitchen staff was one of czar nicholass former chefs and various servants of the romanoffs. The original plan when the americans went over was to feed one million children but they quickly realized the scale of the famine was worse than they had anticipated and by december they realized they would have to be feeding somewhere around 7 million. Wasof the americans who sent over, frank golder was the first to explore the famine zones. He wrote at the time, the famine is bad beyond all imagination. Millions are doomed to die and they are looking it in the face. To see russia is to make one wish you were dead. These are the kinds of things that golder and the other americans were seeing when they arrived. This is a photograph of a young refugee. Victims of the famine. Is what awaited the americans and it is something they could not have prepared themselves for. Older wrote about being a particularly disturbed by a scene he golder wrote about being particularly disturbed by a scene he witnessed of a woman fighting pegs for a scrap of pumpkin rind. He her tale of women killing their children and then killing themselves because it was too painful to watch their children starve. The worst places where the orphanages and childrens homes and hospitals. Some childrens homes were set up for no more than 30 kids were now crammed with 400 to 500 orphan kids. The conditions were beyond description. One man said after visiting one of these orphanages, there is just enough food in teat to make and heat to slow make their deaths slow. People in new york once said they envied me because i saw so many interesting things. Yes. Interesting. There is no escape even in this railway car. Men and women come to the door begging for bread and it children can be heard whining beneath the car window. A great many men develop something they called famine shock. Peasants first aid whatever remaining grain they had. After first eight whatever ate whatever remaining grade grain they had. This was followed by eating all the cats and dogs in the village. Toally, some resorted cannibalism. Some killed their victims after luring them into their homes. More commonly, they would raid ceremony cemeteries. The problem became so pronounced that local authorities typically had to put the bodies that had just died in stables and sheds, lock the door, and keep a guard outside. Young scholar who later went on to become one of the famous sociologists of the 20th century, toward the famine zone at the time, interested in studying what happens to people subjected to such conditions. He wrote in a memoir not long after coming to the u. S. , revolution promised to save the people from a despotism. Not keeplsheviks did those vows, at least to they gave the people the communion of human sacrifice. The image i am showing here was from a series of drawings and knowings done by a man we almost nothing about that are now in the collection at the Hoover Institution out at Stanford University. The russian text on the bottom says Russian Village in february or march. On the farright it says cannibalism. The russians have two words for cannibalism. People eating and corpse eating. They made a distinction between the two. I did much of the research for this book at the Hoover Institution since that is where photographsles and ended up. One of the things that was truly difficult for me researching it was to go through these hundreds of photographs that were taken by americans and soviet officials of the famine and the acts of cannibalism, which will recorded. Were recorded. They were horribly disturbing tried tod i communicate the depth of this horror and suffering without trying to sensationalize it. Which i am giving around the states now, i have purposely avoided any thisgraphs of it and chose image. From the beginning the americans realized of the famine was much worse than they imagined. You will sometimes hear about this famine as the vole got famine or the volga river famine famine or the volga river famine. It covered Something Like 100 million square miles at its peak. This is a map that the ara made. Here is moscow up here. Shaded areas show you the extent of the famine and where americans were working. It extended throughout ukraine, population of 26 million, 9 million of which were starving. Worked all the way down in the caucuses and deep into the Ural Mountains as well. It was way beyond the limits we sometimes think of. Famine made it and in normas challenge to deal with but there were other challenges made it an eno rmous challenge to deal with. At its peak you had several million americans working in russia. He put together an army literally of russian employees who worked under them. This network of russians who worked for the ara eventually reached 125,000 people and do of this could be could have been done without the russians. American relief was orchestrating it all but much of the work was done by the russians. Transportation was one of the biggest headaches. Railroad network had been destroyed. Much of it was no longer working. The rail lines that were working were frequently attacked and they did not reach out into the most remote villages were most of this aid was needed. Russia is not famous for its network of paved roads. Spring when you have the , the muddy season, where villages become isolated, it was difficult to get aid out to these people. This is an example of an eight caravan. Winter was the best time because d caravan. Winter was the best time because sleds could travel over snow. Was one of the convoys taking food. Arrived with a fleet of cadillacs and forwards and trucks beyond petrograd and moscow these were not a great deal of help. Russian towns was 20 one aftern 19 revolution and civil war. 1921 after revolution and civil war. This gives you a sense of the mud and just to sort of what life looks like at the time. It was not that they were uncomfortable. They were incredibly dangerous as well. All of the ara men got guns quickly after they arrived. Whenever they would leave their personnel houses to walk back to the personnel their houses to walk back to the personnel houses, they would walk in the middle of the room roads or they could have time to see if someone was running at them to attack them. Men one night were awoken by the sound of marauders coming in, guns drawn. The americans jumped out of bed with their guns. There was a gun battle and the americans tasted them off. Another group awoke in the middle of the night to smell smoke and realized people were trying to burn their house down around them. We were constantly being surveilled by the secret police who watch their every step and try to force the russian employees to spy on the americans. The greatest threat of all was typhus. Typhus was the disease that all americans lived in fear of. It was so widespread. It was in all the Railway Carriages upholstery, fleas and infected lice crawling on floors and on the walls of buildings and homes. The ara men when they would go to orphanages would want to pick up the children, but they were afraid to do that for fear of getting fit in and coming down with typhus. The russian couriers who had to ride the railways and bring supplies to the americans suffered the most. At one point Something Like half of all russian couriers ended up in the hospital with typhus. Took overeep quickly the ara. The americans realized that while food was vital, they had to do more to try to save russia. The country had been hit not only by typhus but by other Infectious Diseases cholera, malaria, smallpox. Americans went out to literally fix much of the ravaged medical system. They went into hospitals, which now low longer even had aspirin. Bandages were being wrapped in old newspapers. He brought supplies. The imported millions of dollars of link ads, disinfectants. They set up a free dental clinics. They outfitted a large hospital train that went from town to town offering free medical care. They installed ofas just one such children being inoculated in petrograd. Roughly alped import half Million Pounds of shoes and clothing from the United States to give to russian children. Ofs is an example in odessa three kids with their new shoes from the ara. The leather looks so stiff, it must have been painful to walk in, but i am sure they were glad to have them. There clothing is made from repurposed sacks of green, sewn into dresses, pants. They created special programs to intellectuals, academics, artists, and theater performers. Feedingated special operations. They brought in 28 thousand pounds of the latest scientific scientific areas. Hadias intellectual class been cut off since 1917. They were starving for information that pertained to the latest research. The ara. Helped make that possible free subscriptions to medical journals to a number of russian universities. Nobels ivan pavlov, laureate with one of his famous dogs, who was being visited by a group of a arm group of ara men who is being visited. Whoara would take refugees fled in search of food. In return for payment in american corn, they would organize them into work brigades and send them out to fix destroyed bridges, repair schools, buildings, install drinking fountains that had not existed before. They dug wells. They did a number of works that tried to in some way begin to restore the utterly devastated infrastructure. As you can imagine, this was grueling work for the men of the ara who at times felt like they did nothing but work. R, times a little r and to let ones hair down. Moscow,o were in petrograd, and the bigger cities, were able to go to the theater, opera, and l. A. And ballet. In the summer, they would picnic at the estates of the mobility, go skinnydipping in the moscow river, and they play baseball. This is a picture of americans having a little baseball game. They brought their bats, the ball, they have a couple minutes. Here is a russian thinking probably, what are they doing . On the fourth of july 1920 two, they had a series of these baseball games organized as a way of marking independence day. There was a good deal of partying. They had their victrolas with them. They had some photographs with them. They would invite young wishon young russian women to party with them in the personnel houses. There was a good deal of fox trotting. Happenedfamous party in moscow in 1921 when the Star Attraction was isadora duncan, who danced for all the men. Gotrently he got all it quite rowdy from written accounts. There was quite a lot of drinking. The soviet officials loved trying to drink the americans under the table. This was not fine wine or Something Like that. This was russian moonshine. Cupara man recalled being a of the stuff to drink and said it looked like water, but smelled like a mixture of gin, oil, and kerosene. He was too polite to refuse, though. There was a good deal of romance. The americans went over, mostly young men in their 20s, a lot of them veterans of world war i. They did not speak a word of russian for the most part, so they had to hire a lot of translators and interpreters and others to work in their offices. Many of these were young women from the former educated classes of czarist russia. Some of them were daughters of the old russian ability. Nobility. We do not know how many affairs there were, but there were Something Like 30 marriages between the americans and the russian women, who became known as famine brides. A woman by involved the name of georgina. This was a courtship done by a fairly this was a portrait done by a fairly wellknown russian artist in 1922. She was one of these people from a noble emily family in st. Petersburg who lost everything in the revolution. She had been reduced to selling matches on the street. She had been educated all over europe, spoke english and french, and was hired by the ara to work in their office in petrograd. It was in that office that abate regina amanda first saw and it was love at first sight, at least for him. Here is a picture of childs on es onarright chil the farright. He was from lynchburg, virginia. He went on to harvard and fought in france in world war i. Like many men who signed up for the ara, he did so partially out of a desire for adventure. He also had dreams of becoming a writer and he thought the experience would provide him with material. A was also a man motivated by sense of service, a sense of obligation to help humanity. He had a certain sympathy even for the revolution itself. He was a committed socialist. He voted for eugene v dabbs in the 1920 election eugene debs and the election. Home, heetters back became convinced he was the idealist of my history. When i was trying to figure out how i would tell the story of the ara and the famine and it tell it in a way that would be engaging and bring people to life, i realized that to discuss large groups of people, 30 Million People starving, it is hard to connect with that sort of thing. It becomes an abstraction. I wanted to find several of who had left behind letters and diaries and memoirs and things, who would allow me to tell the stories through their experiences. One of them i came up with was him. , not from mymen own failing, but the ara did not hire any women because they thought it would be too dangerous for them. He was my idealist. I then found my realist in frank golder. He was an interesting character. He was born in russia into a jewish family. His family fled russia due to the pug rooms two to the park oms due to the porg pogroms. He then became a professor. Then moved on to Stanford University. And a man bynic the name of William Kelley from kentucky, also went to harvard. All of my stars went to harvard. Fought in world war i as well. Later become a new york at executive. He went over without any great idealism, romanticism, and quickly soured on the whole experience of famine fighting. Hero letters that are dripping he wrote letters that are dripping with sardonic and cynical, and at times tasteless comments. This is a good contrast to the idealism of Something Like chi les. I have a romantic in fleming. He went over thinking it would be a great adventure, but the first few months he found miserable in moscow. He regretted having come. He told his father and mother that he wished she could come back to the United States soon. He hired a russian language tutor by the name of paulina, and all of a sudden things changed. He never wanted to go back to the United States. He had a series of romances. Even after he left russia, he kept wishing he could go back and meet up with paulina and the others. These are my characters i used to tell the story. Back to childs. Him in a photograph of dining hall incas on a dining hall in kazan with one of the surplus trucks the ara brought with them. He arrived in russia and was sent to the city of kazan. It was a huge territory. It was 4. 5 Million People spread out over 96,000 square miles. He worked like a dog like so many of them, day and night. Most of the russians committed should be said it worked equally hard. There was one russian man who when he was told that they started work at the ara office five days a week at 9 00 a. M. Responded, yes, this is how they exploit us. He did not last very long. Chiles gave his life to fighting the famine. He came down with typhus and for several days lingered close to death. He was forced to go to germany to recuperate. He could not wait to get back to russia. Hero his mother from the hospital in germany. I am so anxious to get back to because on to get back to kazan. Much of this i think had to do a georgina. He had hertrance transferred from petrograd to because on. Kazan. In two years, from 1921 to 1923, the ara carried out the greatest humanitarian relief effort in history at the time. The numbers are amazing. 11 Million People were being fed a day at the peak of the operation. It worked in 28,000 cities, towns, and villages. They shipped one million tons of food, seed, clothing, and medicine. They distributed medical supplies to 15,000 hospitals. They inoculated 10 Million People against Infectious Diseases. Nevertheless, the best estimate would be roughly 6 Million People died as a result of the famine, but the americans did manage to save over 10 million lives. What is more, the ara gave the russian people hope, which they had not had before. Iis is an amazing letter found at the Hoover Institution archives written by some women to the men of the ara. The archive at stanford has a lot of these, many of them beautifully illustrated, like this one. You see that is the new york city skyline with the statue of liberty to the left, the american aid ship dropping these life rings with ara on them down into the sea. This one was written in the crime area dish in the crimea in the crimea and it reads, we them others of the sevastopol district, overwhelmed with gratitude, thank you for the concern you have extended to our children. Tears of emotion poor from our eyes at the sight of how her childrens faces that were pale and exhausted are once again healthy thanks to the fraternal help of the americans. Our children are happy. We mothers are joyous and now have hope for the future. May the hard to made this possible be forever blessed and made the hand that gives always be full. Favorite, my favorite that i found. This is that hermitage restaurant in moscow that turned into an ara kitchen. In girls having their lunch march, 1922. Operationssed its for good in moscow and the americans went home. Before this, gorky wrote the letter to hoover in which he ofd in all the history human suffering i know of nothing more trying to the souls of men than the events through which the russian people are passing. In history of humanitarianism, i know of no accomplishment, which in terms of magnitude and generosity, can be compared to the relief you have accomplished. The generosity of the American People resuscitates the dream of fraternity among people at a time when humanity greatly Needs Charity and compassion. Your help will be inscribed in history as a unique and gigantic accomplishment worthy of the greatest glory and will long remain in the memory of millions of russian children whom you have saved from death. Gorky was right. 1975, a halfcentury after the end of Americas Mission to russia, childs returned to the soviet union. He was an old man now. He had spent his life working for the state department throughout the world, including serving as ambassador to saudi arabia and ethiopia. He stayed married to georgina until her death and 1964 in 1964. When he arrived in the soviet union, he told one of the officials that he had been a member of the American Relief administration. Widened, his face lit up, and he whispered with ara. Ce Many Russians at that time still remembered and were still grateful for americans charity and compassion. Thank you. [applause] i am happy to take any questions people might have. In the back. How did you come to get started on this particular subject . How did i come up with this idea for the book . I have a folder at home in my study titled book ideas. Most are pretty bad. I wrote a book called former people, a story of the russian nobility after 1917. I focused on a few families and there. In their in i was reading about these young women from once prominent families who had lost everything americans were coming and hiring people who could work as interpreters. I started reading about these women getting jobs with the ara, having great experiences working for them, and i thought this is a great story. I know nothing about this. I spent my whole life studying russia. I dont know why i do not know about this. I filed that away for a future book project. When i came back to it, i was toying with the idea of trying to do as fiction. I had this elaborate plot that i had put together, interesting characters, i thought, and then i got cold feet. I was not sure i had the writing skills to pull off fiction. Even more importantly, by now realizing the facts of the famine, i knew that if i had put all of this stuff into a novel, people would not believe it. They would be thinking i am exaggerating for dramatic effect. I said this has to be written as a work of nonfiction. My impression of herbert is not the president same Herbert Hoover who does acts of charity. Is that a false impression . Hoovers reputation and who was he is a man. As a man. Yeah. Before the depression, which would destroy his reputation, he was known as the worlds greatest humanitarian. Through his work in belgium for example. His work in europe throughout world war i and his work with the ara in russia. His reputation is destroyed as a result of his presidency. And also, i think, throughout the period of the cold war, we americans did not want to be reminded about times when we worked alongside the soviets. I think there was an element of that. That being said, you know, hoover did some things that were not so good. I write about those my book. One of the things that helped launch him into the presidency thethis horrible flood in lower regions of the mississippi in the 1920s. Hoover was put in charge of those relief operations and he basically saw that all the aid went to poor white people and very little or none went to poor black full. Fulks. Folks. In camps and forced to do the building under armed guards. In the depression, if he did not order it, he okayed his kicking peoples of mexican descent out of this country and forcing them to go south of the border, a great many of them american citizens of mexican descent. The idea being we need jobs for real americans. I do not want to make hoover out to be a total saint. He was not. But he did do some remarkable things. How did the soviets handle this history . I have never heard of it either. Was there any attempt to talk about it . Was it a raised from the history books erased from the history books . I talk about what happens when the americans leave. There is a huge banquet the soviets throw three americans throw for the americans in moscow. A soon as they are over the border, the russians do everything they can to remove any trace that the americans had ever been there. There had been a Herbert Hoover memorial highway. That was quickly renamed. There had been memorial hospitals named after americans that were renamed. Many people in russia worked for the americans were arrested as spies come in fact some of them were still being arrested after world war ii. The whole operation, when it was discussed, was discussed as a plot by hoover to overthrow the soviet government, but the vigilance of the had saved the soviet government from the nefarious deeds of her of hoover. Then it was forgotten. I was in moscow in september. I was walking along the street and i remembered that the aras main office was on that street. Sure enough, there was the building. I wanted to get a little poster made that said, do you know who lived and worked here . My russian friend and said that was not a great idea. I am hoping the book will come out in russia. All of my books have been published there. I have yet to hear of my publisher will go ahead with it not. I hope so. You alluded to this little bit, but can we hear more about how this story or why the story was not known here in the u. S. . In russia, may more understandable, but we dont know about it. It is so much a story about Herbert Hoover. With the depression, his he leaves office in the early 30s, reputation destroyed. Maybe he was not always the best publicist for himself, making sure that people remembered the things that he had done before he was president. I grew up a child of the cold i dont i dont know, think we wanted to focus on moments where america and the soviet union had worked together. For these sorts of reasons, it was kind of forgotten. Yes. I seem to remember my mother working for a russian lawyer in world war ii collecting money and clothing and so on. Am i remembering collecting correctly . Was at a private effort at that time . There might have been. I do not know. We did a lot with the soviet union during world war ii with linda lease. To the soviet union to keep them going in the fight against germany. I am not an expert on that thing. Iople often bring up, well, have heard of the famine in the ukraine in the 30s. Why havent i heard of this . Stalin, no under International Help with that. I have a very good friend who still has a linda lease has a lend lease blanket. Before the 1920s, there were insurgents from the russian army. Catalyst to get this started . The relief . No. The breakdown. It is hard to imagine what russia went through from the beginning of world war i through the beginning of 1920. It was the apocalypse, basically. The country was utterly destroyed due to revolution and war. Amongis mass desertion some of these red army soldiers. A lot of them were going over to these peasant armies, who were taking their guns and fighting against the red soldiers. It is not like this is a front line. In our civil war, there is the north and the south. In the russian civil war, it is chaos all over the place. Relation to the collectivization of agriculture that followed shortly . In some ways, there might be a slight connection, only in the fact that after the bolsheviks seized power, the reds begin to requisition grain from peasants. They go out and take the grain. This stopped in 1921 where they retreat from these extreme measures and you get the beginning of the new economic policy. They can keep their grain and pay a tax on it, that sort of thing. Say, you could stalin, you could say, starts the revolution all over again. The peasants are forced onto collective farms and under much tighter control. That was obviously a factor in the famine that breaks out in the early 1930s. There is also a National Component to that. The reason we know so much about the famine in the 1930s is because much of it was centered in ukraine. The Ukrainian Community outside of russia has done a good job of writing about this famine, documenting what happened. That is much better known, even though no americans were really there to witness much of it. I am getting a signal. One more question. Ok. Yes. How are people how were people recruited to go to russia . They came from all over the country. Most of them were men in their 20s. A good many of them had served in world war i. Some of them were rhodes scholars in england at the time. The ara really gets going before the russian famine started to do work in europe after we were one after world war i. Word spreads about these American Relief efforts. Of theng men, so much reason they went over is they wanted in adventure. They had these experiences in world war i. For some of them, it was this amazing thing, which is hard to imagine. They went back home to minnesota and are like, this is boring. They wanted excitement. This is something that is fascinating because the russians could not even begin to wrap their minds around that fact. These were people who live in a country that was so boring they wanted to go off to these warravaged places. The americans would say i have come for adventure, and they would be like, please, can we have a little less adventure . They had had enough adventure thateveral centuries and period from 1914 to 1923. I will end it there, but thank you all very much. [applause] this is American History tv on cspan3, where each weekend we feature 40 hours of programming exploring our nations past. Next, on the civil war. 198 anniversary of ulyssesesque grants birthday, the Grant Monument association holds a discussion between general David Petraeus and elizabeth samet. This event took place online. Good evening. On behalf of the grand monument association, welcome to this special Online Program to mark president ulysses s grants 198th birthday. The Grant Monument association is a nonprofit organized in