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Fighting the famine of 1921-1923 in the Urals

07.04.2006, 16:20

Julia Khmelevskaya,
The South Ural State University (Chelyabinsk)

Fighting the famine of 1921-1923 in the Urals:
American ?attack?, local resistance and mutual adaptation (1)

The problem of international help to starving people and victims of political and military conflicts was brought into being with the XXth century?s wars and revolutions. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Civil War produced acute food shortages in Russia. Wartime devastation and food requisitions of ?War Communism? were compounded by two seasons of drought, and by 1920 it was clear that a full-scale famine was under way in the Volga River Valley, the Urals, Crimea, Ukraine, and Armenia. The situation was so desperate that in early 1920s the Soviet government authorized Maxim Gorky to send out a worldwide appeal ?to all honest people? for food aid to avert the starvation of millions in Russia.
The United States government had not officially recognized the Soviet regime by that time but it was pressed from many sides to intervene the situation, and in August 1921 an agreement was negotiated (Riga Agreement) to begin a famine relief program (2). The Bolsheviks were finally forced to allow American food supplies into the Soviet Russia to stabilize a system in complete collapse. US President Warren Harding appointed Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, to organize the relief effort. Under Hoover's terms, the American Relief Administration (ARA) was to be a completely American-run relief program for the transport, storage, and delivery of relief supplies (mainly food and seed grain) to the people in the famine region. After Soviet officials agreed, hundreds of American volunteers (300) were dispatched to oversee the program. The Americans mobilized thousands of local Russian employees (120.000) to conduct the relief work under very difficult circumstances.
The ARA gradually earned the trust of the local Communist authorities and was given almost free hand to distribute thousands of tons of grain, as well as food remittance, clothing and medical supplies. On the peak of famine in 1922 the ARA was feeding up to 10 million people daily, including million and a half in the Ural-Ufa District. The ARA aid continued till 1923, by which time local farms were again producing and the famine backbone broken. This remarkable humanitarian effort was credited with saving many millions of lives. Hoover and his ARA were honored by the Soviet government for the care and generosity that the United States had shown to the people of Russia in this desperate crisis.
But just a few years later this cooperation had been almost completely forgotten. After the departure of the ARA from the Soviet Union political leaders of both countries acted to minimize the effect of the American relief effort. The American government continued its policy of non-recognition of the Soviet Union in the face of generally favorable experience of the ARA during the preceding twenty two months. The Soviets undertook a campaign to remove any remains of appreciation of ?capitalistic? philanthropy from the memory of its citizens, and the ?Americanized? methods of work so much praised by Soviet leaders in early 1920s as an example of efficiency and constructiveness were left behind in favor of ?Great Turn? in 1930s. The memory of American philanthropy has only been kept alive by the Soviet propaganda campaign that exaggerated the ARA subversive activity and has continued for several decades through all the changes in Soviet leadership. The need to revise the ideologically discomforting event apparently overrode other considerations and derogatory interpretation of American motives for relief mission was repeated in official narratives and scholarly literature (3).
For years Russian researchers have not been encouraged to explore this issue mainly for ?ideological? reasons because the results could have been not in the ?party line? or official narratives. Conventional historiography paid attention to political aspects of famine fighting, considering the problem of 1920s famine a side effect of wrong policy of the Soviets and relating its solution mainly to correction of political course (introducing NEP) and stabilization of political regime. At the same time the international aid to the starving population of Soviet Russia and especially help provided by such a notorious anti-communist and anti-Bolshevik as Herbert Hoover and his ARA remained underestimated, misrepresented or, at best, relegated to a sort of curious footnote to history of legitimized Soviet-American relations started in the era of Franklin Roosevelt (4).
There is no special study exploring the social and cultural aspects of the ARA activity from the Russian side and on the local level in particular, although it was remote regions where the famine was most terrible and the ARA aid had played most vital role. To a certain sense, the choice of the Urals as an object is explained by Hoover?s personal connections with the region ? for six years before the revolution the Hoover brothers invested in Ural mines, traveling and working in towns such as Kasli, Karabash, Kyshtim, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg (5). Of course, one might assume that sending ARA envoys to the area of his former activity the American Secretary of Commerce sought to meet his certain own ends. But this is not the main concern of this paper. More important is that the Ural region had been one of the largest districts of the ARA, being at the same time one of the most famine stricken even to compare with widely publicized Volga Region. Its population was poly-ethnical and less westernized or even russianized than in other famished regions. For the most part of it the work of the ARA had become the very first encounter with mass organization that acted in the name of foreign country and represented ?opposite? bourgeois system. Even though this experience might have been superficial, still it?s rather unusual in the context of the early twenties and should be considered multi-dimensionally.
Most of available historiographical representations of the ARA follow well established approaches of social and political history, where priority is given to the ?rational? and ?structural?, while cultural background, spheres of behavior, perception and interpretation remain under-appreciated. More often, the categories of ?attack? and ?resistance? placed in the title of this paper are taken exactly in political way, meaning direct opposition. In general, there are two common extremes shared by American and Russian conventional historiography correspondingly ? the former emphasizes exclusively philanthropic character of mission, laying most of the blames for its failures and shortcomings to the Bolsheviks, the latter pays an oversized attention to American subversive activity, leaving behind the real value of help rendered to the population.
This paper is not focused on either justifying American ?charity? in Russian eyes or exposing the ARA ?true? intentions in early Soviet Russia. Its overall aim is to initiate a reevaluation of this experience and throw more light on the reasons (political, bureaucratic, social, and cultural) of the ARA one-sided representation. It is possible only by using most advanced approaches of contemporary historiography, more particular, approaches by participants of so called ?resistance debate? that has become relevant in recent years (6). Here the term ?resistance? is taken not only as active but also as passive and indirect opposition ? maneuvering, inertia, calculated incompetence, dissembling before authority, stealth, circumvention, solidarity against outside forces, ?hidden transcripts?, co-optation and adaptation to one?s own ends etc., which often proved more effective that direct opposition. There are several fields on which these mutual resistance and accommodation can be visualized. Culturally, all of them are closely interrelated but just for convenience it makes sense to characterize them separately.

Politics, great and small

According to Riga Agreement, the ARA was strictly forbidden to do any politics and had to limit itself exclusively within relief mission. But when Americans came to Soviet Russia, very quickly they understood that politics was everywhere ? the way to communicate, the way to dress, to hire personnel, in general, as they put it, ?to make the show run? ? everything was political or was seen as political by the Soviets. Above all,, in the regions the ARA men had to work with local officials whose notions of politics sometimes were even more radical than of their Moscow superiors. Slowly recovering from Civil War and War communism, they were still suspicious and distrustful even to those who came to make relief.
In many respects the Ural-Ufa district, covering the territories of Ufa Gubernia, Bashkir Republic, partly Chelyabinsk, Perm and Ekaterinburg Gubernias and later Koustanai Gubernia, had become a ?model district? where the relations with the local authorities were much better than in any other territory supplied by the ARA. Perhaps, one of the reasons was exactly Hoover?s former experience ? it was known that many things are reported to him personally and in 1920s Bolshevik leaders tried to be a sort of a nice to him, considering even the possibility of inviting him as economical advisor (7). In general, despite minor frictions, on public level most of Ufa accounts emphasize local authorities? cooperation. ?The local people and officials were uniformly courteous to the Americans. Hot-headed communists might arise in party conferences and denounce the foreign bourgeoisie but in direct dealing I have never met with anything but the maximum courtesy of which their crude natures were capable? I never felt sure that they were deliberately seeking to sabotage the work? (8).
It is necessary to keep in mind that the Urals has always been multi-ethnical region and crucible of the Russian Civil War. In spring of 1921, shortly after the war, it became an area of mass anti-soviet and nationalistic movement that was suppressed with regular Red Army force only in several months, and in 1922 the situation there still stayed very tense (9). In spring of 1922 there again was a deep political game being played in this region. The Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic became the very first subject included in the Ufa-Urals ARA district. On arrival here, Americans knew almost nothing about Bashkirs and Bashkiria, they did not even had a map, but since this was one of the most famished areas, receiving just a few supplies from the Center, very soon the ARA became the main food provider for Bashkir population. The nationalistic moods were still alive here and in 1922 the Bashkirs joined to a movement looking toward a Pan-Tartar nation to include several Tartar republics in the Volga Region and Urals which were, as it was thought, Soviet merely in the name. They had not been russianized yet and, having absolutely no foreign connections hoped to be publicized in America and abroad through the ARA. But as the controllers of most of the food in this part of world the ARA refused to be a factor in their politics.
The reason may well have been pragmatic ? the ARA men knew that the Soviet (Central) government had the country well in hand. They were quite aware that there was a friction between the center and Gubernias? authorities and that the latter had many complaints of Moscow?s ignorance of local conditions. But the ARA, which was getting money from both sources, was actually caught between the two and, to keep good relationship with both the locals and the Center, had to step very cautiously (10). The Ufa district supervisor Walter Bell confessed in 1922 that ?France in 1918 was a summer resort to compare with our current assignment. The diplomatic entanglements here make Paris Peace Conference of 1919 look a well conducted public school? (11). Therefore, the organization that was pronounced ?foreign? and ?bourgeois?, instead of being politically subversive and allegedly anti-Soviet, indeed had worked as a stabilizing factor in this very problematic region. The local GPU surveys of public mind show that the ARA was definitely expected to conduct subversive activity, as well as it was expected that Americans would be seeking to buy values etc., but even though these reports emphasized that counterrevolutionary agitation was carried out not by Americans themselves but ?Russian Americans?. E.g., some ARA native employees claimed that Americans came here to take power, that all sea-ports and big railway stations of Russia are full with American grain but it is the Soviet Government that does not provide transportation and so on (12). Therefore, this was not the American propaganda or subversive activity, the evidence of what is none in the archives so far, but rather a sort of political interpretation of American mission by those who were discontent with the Soviets and nourished some expectations as to the ARA.

American administering and Soviet bureaucracy

In order to observe the activity of the ARA and other relief missions from abroad there had been established the institute of Soviet plenipotentiaries for work with foreign relief organizations. The main office of all-Russian plenipotentiary was in Moscow and his authorized agents were sent to all the regions and gubernias covered by foreign relief operations. Their assignment was to serve mediators between local executives and foreign missions and at the same time keep an eye and report on what is done. But there were several points of friction.
First, being independent from local executive and party authorities and subject only to Moscow, very often they not facilitated but even more complicated the situation by authoritative attempts of supervising both Americans and local executives and sometimes coming to a conflict with both. ?We suspect all representatives of the Center as being sent here to throw monkeys wrenches in our works; they are equally unwelcome with the local Soviet Government which wishes to deal with us direct, and they are anathema to the Bashkir Government which hates Moscow and await the hour to spring a war of independence? (13) - noted American observer.
The second point was that the ARA division of the famished regions into districts and sub-districts did not comply with the Soviet administrative division, e.g. the Ufa-Urals District covered both Ufa Gubernia and Bashkir Republic with capital in Sterlitamak, from spring 1922 it was expanded to Chelyabinsk, Perm and Yekaterinburg Gubernias and from summer 1922 ? to Koustanai Gibernia which then was a part of Kirgiz Republic. Local authorities, citizens and local organizations were strongly prescribed to contact with foreigners only through these plenipotentiaries, but there was too much red tape and confusion between these officials as to who is superior to whom ? all finalizations as to American feeding allocations were made at Ufa ARA HQ but each of them, as representative of particular administrative unit, was separately responsible before Moscow. It is worth mentioning that administrative superiority of the ARA apparatus was admitted by Soviet plenipotentiaries and executives of different levels, especially on early stages og the ARA operations. On their conferences and sessions they kept arguing the necessity of taking ARA?s departments into Soviet hands, ?decomposing its apparatus by Soviet work?, etc (14). Besides pure political underlaying, these declarations may be qualified as attempts to appropriate the system that had been really functioning.
In order to alleviate local bureaucratic inconsistency, there was eventually negotiated a sort of inner hierarchy in which all local plenipotentiaries of the Ufa-Urals district becamr administrative subjects to the plenipotentiary of Ufa Gubernia (15). Of course, filing all applications and requests through several separate bureaucratic structures required lot of office work and, in order to speed up the things done, the locals, Americans and their Russian inspectors who were obliged to use these functionaries as mediators too, often neglected them in favor of direct contacts, especially in minor cases. The very persistence and repetitiveness of orders issued by the central authorities to stop this practice, are the evidence how widespread it was.

Bourgeois philanthropy in terms of soviet economical collapse

According to the Riga Agreement, the US provided food and its transportation to the main sea-ports of Russia and Baltic countries from where it would have been delivered and distributed in the famished regions. All expenses concerning transportation inside Russia, storage, guard, kitchen equipment, cooking and dispensing food, as well as salaries of Russian personnel hired by the ARA were to be covered by the Soviet side. In other words, the relief rendering by the ARA was not ?philanthropy? or ?charity? in a common sense of this word, bur rather a semi-commercial enterprise with its own structure and local affiliations operating separately from Soviet government but paid from its funds. It?s needless to say that in early 1920s these funds were very scarce and government used every chance to avoid financial responsibility. Eventually, in order to alleviate acute transportation crisis and deliver goods to starved regions, the ARA agreed to pay railway workers with American corn (16).
As the situation improved, the Soviet authorities started pointing out that the ARA relief was too burdensome and expensive. The American accounts show that the ARA felt offended with this and used every possibility to counterattack the government should it charge them with being too great an expense. ?All we need to say is that the total of the cost of our freight at a time when we were feeding 10, 000, 000 starving Russians and distributing enormous quantities of medical supplies, inoculating millions etc, - in short, saving the nation, was only one eight of the transportation cost incurred by the army, which is doing nothing for the reconstruction of Russia? (17).
Since mid-1922, when the famine backbone had been broken, the Soviet government persistently appealed to the ARA for help in reconstruction of national economy, asking the Americans for credits and trying to involve them as sponsors or commercial mediators. The Riga Agreement does not render the ARA rights for any direct constructive activity beyond its feeding and medical campaigns. However, it was the Ural region where, in order to meet both local needs for reconstruction and the Agreement lines, there had been found a sort of a compromise that contributed much to the local economy recovery. The authorities were offered to organize detachments from refugees and unemployed, so that they would clean the cities and repair public facilities receiving American food for the work done. The result of this public works was repairing many bridges, roads, buildings and launching several Ural plants which had been out of work ever since the end of First World War (18).

Business of relief in Russian way: the Russian school of American rescue party

The first problem that affected directly the process of work and communication was problem of language and translation. Only one from the Ufa Americans knew a little bit of Russian, the rest had to rely upon their interpreters. There had been no problem to find an English speaking person in the capital, sea-port and university city, but neither Ufa nor other major Ural cities (Chelyabinsk, Perm and Yekaterinburg) possessed any of these virtues. Most of American staff had a good command of French and German and on the early stage of their operations they preferred to hire personnel who could speak at least these languages, while their English interpreters worked overtime. In the Urals there were quite a many of Volgo-Germans an Estonians, but soon the practice of hiring them as ARA employees proved ineffective and even dangerous ? as it was noted in American accounts, they formed a sort of ?German clique? with strongly anti-Soviet elements in power that provided local government with many grounds for complaint (19).
In most backward places of multi-ethnic Bashkiria the ARA instructions sometimes went through double and even triple translation ? from English to German, then to Russian, and then to Baskir or Tartar and back. Of course, no party could be sure of ?safe? transmission of true meaning through this sort of ?wire? and had grounds for arbitrary or perverse interpretation that sometimes could have worked political.
As the scale of operations increased, there started the real hunt for interpreters ? the Ufa ARA was ready to hire everyone who pretended to know ?some English? and sometimes there were very funny situations. Eventually, most of positions of interpreters were occupied by intelligentsia and former privileged classes but among ARA employees sometimes happened representatives of Jewish low classes who used to live in emigration in England and the US before the Revolution but whose knowledge of both Russian and English was equally faulty (20). But still, not knowing the language, and even with interpreters, Americans had to overtake the true meaning of some Russian new political slang, words and abbreviations and integrate them into their accounts and daily conversations (?ispolkom?, ?gubzdrav?, ?tovarish?, ?payok?, ?kontora?, ?drozhki?, ?nichego?, ?zafftra? etc.). They even had to invent new words (?nichegoism?, ?zafftraism?) and classifications (?Russian sichas? and ?American sichas? in order to express some notions they did could not find either in English or Russian.
From cultural and practical point of view, the main thing that shocked the Americans when they came to famished regions, was common passivity, both of people and the authorities ? the former had nothing to consume and the latter had almost nothing to distribute. Both were doing nothing, just waiting to be helped or to die, and adaptation of active ?Americanized? scheme to the Russian conditions passed not always smoothly and not always met understanding. Many things brought by Americans from their experience of relief work in Europe proved irrelevant or just did not work in Russia, especially in its most backward parts and remote villages. E.g., organizing kitchens in the countryside, the Americans usually sought to arrange a time schedule for relays of children that seemed to them the most reasonable way to feed as possible more people. In some instances this could not be done by very simple reason ? there was not a single clock or a watch in the whole village and vicinity (21).
The same happened to some other ARA requirements and principles of feeding. The instruction that caused most disappointment was that kids would eat all portion given right on the spot, not taking anything home ? American baby-feeders were afraid that food brought home would have been consumed not by children but by their hungry parents. In their turn, the local people in Russia could not understand why kids were being fed, while the adult men and women who could work, were not (22). Also, the ARA instructions required that all kids and persons ascribed to particular kitchen or feeding station would come there in person and got their food only upon checking the lists and presenting ?admission tickets?. Home delivery was permitted only to sick and exclusively upon presenting the note signed by the doctor. But this system had its faults ? first, Americans could not anticipate that in some families children did not have clothing and shoes to go out, even for food, and second, that very often people bribed or intimidated the doctors in order to get false certification of illness or simply brought for medical examination someone else?s sick kids. Evidence and complaints of that sort are multiple in local archives of Famine Relief Committees (23).
Very soon the ARA men at Ufa learned the Russian methods of making things work ? they got to know such things as shaking hands, ?samovar diplomacy?, ?vodka diplomacy?, they had to start practicing bribes and pulling the strings. They learned how to treat their supply monopoly as a motivational factor to make pressure upon local authorities and population ? e.g. threatening stopping supplies if such and such ARA demand is ignored or taken improperly, etc. In other words, borrowing Maxim Litvinov?s term ?food as weapon?, they learned how to use this weapon, especially concerning medical situation ? e.g., those people and organizations who did not want to go through inoculation and sanitary cleaning were persuaded not only by propaganda means but also by being threatened of deprivation of their food rations and medical supplies (24).
In the office they had to fight the same problems like their communist opponents did - lack of discipline and initiative, smoking breaks, assemblage, dishonesty, etc., and observe numerous Soviet and traditional holidays. Of course, the ARA was not free from graft and abuse, especially in country with such traditions of graft as Russia, but to eliminate this problem, that might be a topic for separate talk, I will only mention that Americans were well aware of theft and dishonesty but eventually came to a conclusion that ?making any systematic effort to eradicate it would have required them residing the helm of the ship to Russians while devoting themselves to prying about the engine room? (25).
In their turn, the ?natives? were studying not only how to fill the American forms and do accounting in American way, but how to come along with their American bosses and take advantage of it. Knowing Americans? desire to be credited for their contribution, the local authorities often committed a very special sort of circumvention. E.g. in the Urals they encouraged the practice of naming the hospitals and children homes after Harold Blandy, the only member of whole American personnel in Russia who died of typhus in Ufa in 1922 ? they knew for sure that these institutions would be 100 percent guarantee provided with American medicines, blankets and other supplies. So what for Americans looked appreciation, for locals looked benefit. Sometimes they even practiced conscientious fraud, reporting both to Moscow and to the ARA fake achievements using ARA help. E.g., the Ufa Americans were very proud of their city repair and cleaning program but in some cases the ARA chiefs were too much trustful to the officials, especially to those who managed to seem nice and collaborating. They gave them food for a special purpose but not always checked the results ? all accounts, both Americans and soviet, repeated the fairy-tale story about building a drainage channel in the city of Zlatoust, 800 meters long, riveted with stone, it was emphasized that this channel was talked over for 70 years and it had been ARA cooperation with local authorities that made these talks true (26). But, as the evidence from local archive of internal affair shows, the canal was never built and the food was appropriated and privately sold by chief city executive (27). And there is a lot of examples of that and more innocent sort.
But nevertheless, in general the ?business-like? and motivational approach seriously raised maneuverability of АRА, whose special status was guaranteed by Riga agreement preventing the Soviets of excessive intervention into its affairs. In fact, being independent of bolshevist authorities as to distribution of supplies and employment of local personnel, in its struggle against the famine of 1921-1923 the American Relief Administration succeeded more than other similar organizations (even GPU reports admitted that in some localities the ARA was feeding more starved population than all the rest organizations both government and foreign altogether (28)). In several cases it took up the responsibility of some of those relief missions when they had to terminate their operations by this or that reason, like Nansen Mission and Far Eastern Relief committees in Chelyabinsk Gubernia, the French Red Cross and ?Mezhrabpom? (International Workers? Relief Committee) in Yekaterinburg (29).

On some peculiarities of ARA?s perception and interpretation

The ARA mission was definite success and by mid-1922 it became very popular among local people. However, it would be not quite correct to speak about deep influence of ?Americanism? on the Soviet life of 1920s, and in province ? in particular. On the one hand, this success which could have become a basis for a long-term constructive cooperation, was a bad entry in political and ideological context. For Russian/Soviet officials the discomfort of the ?bourgeois aid? to bolshevist Russia was too great to be admitted openly. Immediately after the ARA?s withdrawal from Soviet Russia all ?material? signs of its activity (like name plates of Harold Blandy) were removed (30). According to the secret instruction received by local plenipotentiaries and local GPU affiliations, all leftovers of American supplies given to the institutions during liquidation, were confiscated by Government Relief for further distribution in its name (31).
But ?grateful? memory of the American organization proved short-term not only due to purposeful efforts of the Soviet propaganda. In many respects this may be accounted for the specificity of social and cultural atmosphere of the Soviet Russia in the first years after the Civil war. Unlike other foreign nations at the beginning of the XX century, e.g. Germans, French or Turks which had been indoctrinated as potential ?enemies? or ?rivalries? into mass consciousness yet in imperial times, the Americans in Russian mind were staying rather ?distant friends? than opponents (32). But with rare exceptions, the majority of inhabitants of the Ural region, living far from capital cities and seaports, had never seen citizens of the USA live and could judge on them, as well as other foreigners, only by hearsay, believing to all sorts of rumors and fairy-tales. The ?non-virtual? presence of ARA Americans in the Urals in 1921-1923 was too insignificant and intermediated to let the ordinary population make sense of them and create more or less finalized image. In the district that on territory surpassed France, there had been not more than eight or, at best, ten ?true? Americans dealing with general supervision, while all the basic work on the spots and immediate contacts with the population were carried out by their local personnel working in the name of American organization. But with rare exclusions the American name itself meant almost nothing for the locals.
Despite all the explanatory work done by the ARA instructors, it is hardly possible to suggest construction of any stable associations between ?American rations? and America itself. The latter was possible only for ?educated people?, who got their positive or negative notions of ?America? from press, fiction or personal experience and were able to connect the American labels on containers with ?American way of life?. But most of recipients of the ARA food were illiterate peasants, who had never seen American movies, knew nothing about Fenimore Cooper, Henry Ford or even Nat Pinkerton, and had no idea either of ?American imperialism? or ?American democracy?. In terms of informational vacuum, much more often this relief that came from unknown and enigmatic ?American administration? was interpreted in habitual and familiar frames of miracle, advent, heavenly gift and other religious and quasi-religious symbols. The ARA was often depicted as a female, a ?nourishing mother? and grammatically declined in a feminine gender. (?Long live A-ra, our mother and defender!) It is known that coming of transports with American food was accompanied by prayers of all sorts and that there even were requests from people for portraits of Herbert Hoover in order to put the picture of their ?savior from hunger? along with the icons (33). Of course, Americans were flattered treating them like gods. But for starved population the main concern, the most significant reference was ?food?, not ?the American? ? were there communists or even devil himself giving food to their starved children, they would pray for them.
Besides all, the sufficient part of employees hired by the ARA consisted of representatives of former privileged classes, non-party, intelligentsia and clerics ? the disposition of American chiefs in favor of these categories was well-known, being very often a subject of hot debates with the Soviet authorities of all levels. Quite a many of those people used their involvement with the ARA not only to improve their material standards of living (literally ?helping themselves?) but, being prone to consider the advent of the ARA in terms of ?return to normality?, they tried to re-establish their social positions ruined by the Bolsheviks, often juxtaposing themselves to the Soviets and emphasizing their difference from communist bodies. The open opposition was quite rare, it was discouraged and even persecuted by Americans who sought to avoid scandals, but there were cases when the ARA Russian/local inspectors, whose power to feed or not to feed in particular locality was almost absolute, tried to behave like in pre-revolutionary times, causing complaints and disappointment. For example, it was reported that there were cases of requiring to call them ?gospodin? or ?mister?; people were ordered to take off hats upon entrance to the ARA office under the pretext that ?this is not Soviet; in some ARA kitchens kids were made say grace before the meal; the applicants sympathetic to the Soviets were re-addressed to the government relief structures with comment ?let the communists feed you? etc (34). Apparently, many of them did not realize that the ARA was provisional organization designated for emergency relief and had no intention of staying for any other sort of activity.
Thus, there had been a sort of a paradox ? the ?industrial?, ?new? and ?business-like? methods the American Relief Administration sought to demonstrate in Russia, as well as live communicative experience of the provincial population, had been encoded in archaic references. The ?American? specificity of ARA methods could be understood only by tiny minority of educated people, depending on their cultural background and political involvement. The rest ones felt more comfortable with traditional frames ? religious, ethical, politically inferior. The ARA departments were run by old functionaries, food distributed by orthodox and Moslem priest, teachers, village doctors, old army officers and ?charity girls?. By no doubts, the Americans and many of their native employees felt a sort of superior or paternalistic to those being fed. Well dressed, staying in relatively good physical condition and financially secure, in early NEP they were often perceived as representatives of a privileged group, a ?richest class?, causing jealousy and hostility of those left behind their charity. As the new cultural and socializing project deployed in Soviet Russia, these classes as well as the images associated with them were gradually loosing their instrumental potential and opportunities to be reproduced in corresponding practices and subsequently were superseded from social legacy, both on public and informal level.

* * *
For the Russian province of 1920s, demoralized and socially and culturally shocked by the Revolution and Civil war, the АRA became the very first experience of getting acquainted to America in general and to the so called ?Americanized? methods of work in particular. In their turn, the Americans had to face the Russian methods in their early-Soviet version, superficially rigid and extremely politicized but in fact featuring administrative inconsistency and consumer position, where professional competence and organization were often substituted with coercion and intimidation. In this respect the ARA represented favorable contrast in comparison with other relief structures, especially the government ones, whose designation was to fight famine and its dreadful consequences. As against various Soviet and foreign organizations which frequently, for the lack of regular deliveries and funds, were limited to rendering of sporadic and practically uncontrolled distribution, the American Relief Administration did much for building the functional stable machinery of overcoming consequences of the humane disaster. This system should have been based on thorough accounting, motivational factors, independent efforts of local authorities and civil initiative of the population. As they put it themselves, the ARA plan was to help the people to help themselves, always remaining in control, maintaining strict supervision and seeing that the relief is given without discrimination as to politics, religion or social class. Such was the idea, documented in Riga Agreement between RSFSR and the ARA in 1921. Trying to implement it, they really believed they were ?Americanizing? Russia. But not everything went in the way scheduled and sometimes results were quite unexpected.
In 1920s both American perception of the Russian situation and Soviet perception of the ?Americanism? proved quite superficial. Both sides of this unusual experiment saw each other in terms of their own cultural and political background and judged by their own values and dispositions. Politically, both Americans and the Soviets had apparently overestimated the level of consciousness of the local population. The former hoped to find in the regions something what they were used to call ?civil initiative?; they expected hungry revolts, unrest and discontent with the government but instead saw apathy, brutalization, concern with immediate survival and suspicion. The latter, seeking to use American relief for their own political and economical ends, were afraid of American ?counter-revolutionary? influence. The ordinary people concerned with the problem of saving their lives learned how to use both Soviet and American sources for their benefit and coming to terms with changed or changing reality.

NOTES:

1 The research for this paper was made with financial support by fellowship AZ 10/SR/03 granted by Gerda Henkel Stiftung (Germany)
2 See: Agreement between the American Relief Administration and the Russian Socialist Federative Republic // Fisher G. Op. cit. P. 507?510; Russian translation: Soglashenie mezhdu pravitel?stvom RSFSR I Amerikanskoi administratsiei pomoschi // Dokementy vneshnei poitiki SSSR. Т. IV. Мoskva., 1960. S. 281 ? 286
3 See: Weissman B. The Aftereffects of the American Relief Mission to Soviet Russia // Russian Review. Volume 29. Issue 4 (Oct. 1970). P. 411?421; Khmelevskaya Yu. Amerikanskaya pomosch golodayuschim v 1921-1923 gg.: zabytaya stranitsa istorii ili ideologicheskaya manipulyatsia? // Vek pamyati, pamyat? veka: Opyt obraschenia s proshlym v ХХ stoletii. Chelyabinsk, 2004. S. 431?452.
4 For years the only exclusions have been the memoir of historian and ARA worker Frank Golder ?On the Trail of Russian Famine? (1927), history of the ARA operations written by another ARA historian Harold Fisher (?The Famine in Soviet Russia, 1919-1923: The Operations of the American Relief Administration. New York, 1927) and the book of B. Weissman (Weissman, B. Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia, 1921?1923 . Stanford, 1974) The real breakthrough came with the excellent history of the American Relief Administration in Russia by Professor Bertrand Patenaude, a volume published in 2002 by Stanford University Press. (Patenaude, B. The Big Show in Bololand. The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921. Stanford, 2002; see also editorial of this book at URL: http://www.hooverdigest.org/024/patenaude.html, review at URL: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi? path=113921059720052). But still, being based almost exclusively on American sources and organized as a sort of epic narration, this book represents mainly the American side and American experience.
5 See: Hoover H. Years of adventure, 1874 ? 1920. Memoirs. London, 1952. P. 104?106; Afanasieva O. Herbert Hoover na Urale // Vechernii Chelyabinsk. 30.05. 2003.
6See: Scott J. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, 1985; idem. Domination and Art of Resistance. New Haven, 1990: Fitzpatrick Sh. Stalin?s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. New York, 1994; Viola L. Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s. Ithaca, NY, 2002 The Resistance Debate in Russian and Soviet History. Kritika Historical Studies 1. (Eds. M. David-Fox, P.Holquist, M.Poe). Bloomington, Indiana, 2003, et al.
7 See: Lenin V.I. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. T. 4. S. 312; Patenaude, B. Herbert Hoover's Brush with Bolshevism // Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. Occasional Paper no. 248, June 1992; Patenaude B. The Strange Death of Soviet Communism: 1921 Version // Reexamining the Soviet Experience. (Eds. D. Holloway, N. Naimark). Boulder, Colorado, 1996. P. 77?99; Engerman, D. Economic Reconstruction in Soviet Russia: The Courting of Herbert Hoover in 1922 // International History Review 19, no.4 (November 1997). Р. 836-847; TsGIA RB. F. 101. Op.1. D. 182, L.175ob.; GARF. F. R-1064. Op.7. D.26. L. 104 (ob).
8 Kelley W. Descriptive Memorandum of the Work of the ARA District of Ufa. P.39?40. // HIA. ARA Russia. 133: 2.
9 See details in: Safonov D.A.. Velikaya krest?yanskaya voina 1920?1921 gg. I Yuzhnyi Ural. Orenburg, 1999; Kul?sharipov M.M.. Natsional?noe dvizhenie bashkirskogo naroda (1917?1921). Diss. dokt. ist. nauk. Ufa, 1998; Kobzov V.S. , Sichinskii Ye.P. Gosudarstvennoe stroitel?stvo na Urale v 1917?1921 gg. Chelyabinsk, 1997. S. 147?164; Narskii I.V. Zhizn? v katastrofe. Budni naseleniya Urala v 1917?1922 гг. Мoskva. 2001. S. 45?51, 313?327.
10 Kelley W. Extracts from the letters of William J. Kelley, written during the Winter and Spring of 1922. April 2, 1922. // HIA. Frank Golder Papers. 23: 5
11 HIA. ARA Russia. 132: 12.
12 RGASPI. F.5. Op.1. D.2631. L.176; OGAChO. F.77. Op.1. D.452. L.22; TsGAOO RB. F. P-1. Op.1. D.509А. L.4. D. 551. L.11 ob.
13 Kelley W. Extracts, April 2, 1922
14 GARF. F. Р-1058. Op.1. D. 105. L. 200; F.R-1064. Op.7. D. 26. LL. 104 ? 104 ob., 299?299 ob.: OGAChO F.494. Op.3. D.16. L. 19; TsGAOO RB. F. P-1. Op.1. D.511. L. 32 et al..
15 See: GARF. F. R-1058. Op. 1. D.277. L.47.
16 HIA. ARA Russia. 20: 1.
17 HIA. ARA Russia. 319: 7.
18 HIA. ARA Russia. 132: 12; GARF. F.Р?1065. Op. 3. D. 17. L. 38; TsGIA RB 101.Op.1. D. 197. L.119.
19 HIA. ARA Russia. 132: 4.
20 Kelley W. Extracts. April 2, 1922.
21 HIA. Murphy Merle F. Daily Life in Soviet Russia. Typescript. 1923. P. 71?72.
22 HIA. ARA Russia. 132: 12
23 HIA. ARA Russia. 129: 5; TsGIA RB F.100.Op.1. D. 21 L.9. D.48, L.65; F.443. Op.1. D.376, LL. 12,13, 14, 14 ob; OGAChO. F.77. Op.1. D.452. L.22.
24 TsGIA RB F.100. Op.1.D.65. LL.122, 123?123 ob., 186?187; HIA. ARA Russia. 6:4, 132:4.
25 Kelley W. Descriptive Memorandum. P. 11?12, 38?39.
26 HIA. ARA Russia 129:5, 132:12, 133: 1; Bell W. L. On the Edge of Siberia // A.R.A. Bulletin. Ser. 2, XXXIII. P. 7?15; GARF. F. R?1065. Op. 3. D. 17. L. 38; TsGIA RB. F. 101.Op.1. D. 197. L.119; см. также: Fisher H. The Famine cit. P.295?296; Patenaude B. The Big Show. P. 531
27 I am grateful to the Ural historian, Dr. Vladimir Kobzov, for providing me with this information.
28 According to the soviet accounts, in August 1922 up to 9.554.575 people were fed at ARA kitchens and feeding stations, while Nansen mission, the second big relief organization was feeding only 489 thousand (GARF. F. Р-1058. Op.1. D.532. L.99А); in April, 1923, when ARA operation were sufficiently decreased as to compare with summer and fall of 1922, the Central Government Relief (Pomgol) reported that ?the ARA was feeding 2.135.956 people., that is, 74.8% of all being fed by other foreign relief missions?, at the same period Nansen Committee fed 110.096 people, that is 4,3% (GARF. F.Р-1065. Op.3. D.17. L.347); see also: Sovetskaya derevnya glazami VChK?GPU?NKVD. 1918?1922 gg. Moskva, 1998. T.1. S. 543, 552, 585, 586, 593, 596?597, 615, 623?624, 630, 662; Kondrashin V 1922 god v sovetskoi derevne glazami GPU // Otechestvennye spetssluzhby v 20-30-e gody. Istoricheskie chteniya na Lubyanke. 1999. URL: http://www. fsb.ru/history/read/1999/kondrashin.html.
29 HIA. ARA Russia, 129:2, 133:12.
30 HIA. Alexis V. Lapteff?s Papers. American Relief Administration in Ufa. Typescript. P. 11.
31 GARF. F.R-1064. Op.7.D.34. L.234?234 ob; TSGIA RB F. 1316. Op.1. D. 32. LL.220, 270?271.
32 См.: Saul N. Distant Friends: The United States and Russia. 1763?1867. Lawrence, Kansas, 1991; Idem .Concord and Conflict. The United States and Russia, 1867?1914. Lawrence, Kansas, 1996.
33 HIA. ARA Russia. 244: 1; 529: 4. In the beginning these portraits were sent to the local affiliations of ARA to show the source of relief and its organizer. .
34 RGASPI. F. 5. Op.1. D.2631. LL. 26, 176; OGAChO. F.77. Op.1. D. 452, LL.12. 13, 22; F.494. Op.3. D.16. L.134.