10/01/2019
Smith's latest (after Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs) focuses on a little-known period of Russian-American cooperation that saved millions of lives, tracing the story of the American Relief Administration during the early 1920s, led by Herbert Hoover, and its efforts to aid a famine-stricken Soviet Union. After the strife of the Bolshevik revolution, in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Civil War, food and medicine in Soviet Russia were scarce, particularly for people in rural areas. Yet leaders were reluctant to admit the difficulties so many civilians faced. A letter sent by writer Maxim Gorky, asking for assistance, that reached President Woodrow Wilson in 1921 initiated efforts to aid the Soviet Union. "The Russian Job," told through letters and diaries of young American men who served in World War I, who then traveled to the Soviet Union to distribute food and medical help, makes for a fascinating and harrowing tale. VERDICT For readers with an interest in the beginnings of the Soviet period and the collaboration between two nations often at odds with each other.—Amy Lewontin, Northeastern Univ. Lib., Boston
08/05/2019
Smith (Rasputin) delivers a narrowly focused history of one program of the American Relief Administration, a “quasi-intelligence and diplomatic organization” that, during the 1921–1923 famine in the Soviet Union, operated soup kitchens and fed over 10 million people. As starvation, sickness, and political terror gripped the fledgling Soviet Union and prompted the writer Maxim Gorky to appeal to “all honest European and American people” to send food and medicine, workers’ strikes and anarchists’ bombs in the United States had the American government believing Bolshevism was invading the West. Some in Congress believed a relief effort would weaken the Bolshevik government, while others were motivated by humanitarian concerns; ultimately, the program was mobilized. Nearly 400 Americans worked in Russia during the two years, and Smith tells the story from their point of view, drawing on their diaries, letters, reports, and photographs. (Numerous gruesome stories and photos of cannibalism and starvation are included.) His prose moves at a fast clip and takes a matter-of-fact tone about the horrors of the famine. Not all readers may buy the claim that the Soviet Union would have collapsed without this intervention, but this is an intriguing window onto the humanitarian work of the past. Photos. (Nov.)
A Financial Times Best Book of the Year
“These young men [of the ARA] come to life in Smith’s book, flickering past like characters in the black-and-white movies of the era. Their heroism and failings, their love of Russia (and Russian women) help humanize a story that could all too easily slip into the grim abstraction of statistics . . . Despite the epic sweep, the horror and moral splendor of this story, it is essentially unknown to both Russians and Americans; the Russians soon found the aid both a humiliation and a cover for espionage, while the Americans let it slip into the country’s general ahistorical amnesia.” —Richard Lourie, Los Angeles Review of Books
“The American troops who landed in Russia to help reverse the Bolshevik coup of 1917 did little to change history, but cast as imperialist villains, they were useful to Soviet propagandists charged with rewriting it. In The Russian Job, Douglas Smith tells the remarkable tale of a different, largely forgotten yet infinitely more effective intervention . . . A well-written account of a story that should not have passed into obscurity.” —Andrew Stuttaford, The Wall Street Journal
“The Russian Job by Douglas Smith repudiates the modern mythologies of both [the United States and Russia], and their leaders’ twisted histories . . . It is not just Russia that needs to be reminded of this story—so does America, which derived much of its 20th-century greatness from its values rather than military power.” —The Economist
“[The ARA] has been undeservedly forgotten . . . Succinct and readable.” —Anna Reid, Literary Review
"Based on rich archival materials, [The Russian Job] focuses on a group of young Americans who set off for Russia, lured by the exotic and the unknown, and found themselves in the middle of a horrific tragedy . . . Rare photos included in the book lend Smith’s account an eerie vividness." —Maria Lipman, Foreign Affairs
"Douglas Smith’s The Russian Job reads like a thriller as he describes the commitment of anti-communist capitalists helping the Russian people survive one of history’s most devastating famines.” —Nick Lacata, Daily Kos
"The hair-raising account of a great humanitarian act . . . Smith adeptly navigates all elements of the story . . . This expert account deserves a large readership." —Kirkus
"[Smith's] prose moves at a fast clip . . . An intriguing window onto the humanitarian work of the past." —Publishers Weekly
"In July 1921, a massive humanitarian mission was initiated by American philanthropist Herbert Hoover to rescue the Russian people from a famine of cataclysmic proportions. The Russian Job pulls no punches in its brilliant, disturbing and at times horrifically graphic descriptions of people on the abyss of starvation, some of them driven to the ultimate crime of cannibalism. The sufferings witnessed by the American team were unimaginable and left an indelible impression that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. This is an important story that needed to be told and Douglas Smith has produced a fast moving and most compelling read." —Helen Rappaport, author of The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra
★ 2019-09-11
The hair-raising account of a great humanitarian act in which the United States provided vital assistance to the Soviet Union.
Historian and translator Smith (Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs, 2016) reminds readers that World War I and civil war devastated Russian agriculture because the fighting armies lived off the land. By 1920, the Bolsheviks had largely won, but the government continued to forcibly extract grain from the peasants. Then the rains stopped. At first, Lenin "welcomed the famine, since he believed it would destroy the people's faith in God and the tsar. Revolution, not charity, would save the peasants, he said." By the summer, faced with mass starvation and violence, he changed his mind. Many philanthropists and international charities responded to pleas for help, but only one organization had the immense resources required: the American Relief Administration, led by Herbert Hoover, who had already impressed the world with his relief of mass starvation in Belgium and northern France during WWI and then again in Europe after the armistice. A successful businessman, Hoover employed the same talents to organize a vast enterprise led by loyal underlings who oversaw the distribution chain, from docks to warehouses to transportation to the soup kitchens. A few Soviet leaders were congenial, but most believed that the ARA was a nefarious capitalist plot. Secret police harassed the Americans and arrested Russian employees but sometimes, unpredictably, helped by cutting through red tape. Local officials were usually grateful. Infrastructure, housing, sanitation, and disease were terrible, far worse than in Europe. In an often agonizing but necessary book, the author includes letters and anecdotes by participants as well as often horrific photographs, all of which tell a grim story. Starving people do not overthrow governments, so it's unlikely American aid saved the Soviet Union, but it was a magnificent achievement—and Smith adeptly navigates all elements of the story. Except for Hoover biographers, American scholars pay little attention to this episode; it quickly vanished from Russian history.
Although the catastrophic Russian famine and American relief efforts are not completely forgotten, this expert account deserves a large readership.
