Volume 50, Number 4 · March 13, 2003
The Greatest Relief Mission of All
By Orlando Figes
The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921
by Bertrand M. Patenaude
Stanford University Press, 817 pp., $70.00; $29.95 (paper)
On July 31, 1921, The New York Times published an appeal by Maxim Gorky 'To All Honest People.' Tragedy had come to 'the country of Tolstoy'—millions of people were threatened by starvation in the worst famine crisis the world had ever seen. But Russia's misfortune was an opportunity to restore faith in the 'creative force of humanitarian ideas and feelings' whose 'social import was so shaken by the war' of 1914–1918. Gorky asked 'all honest people in Europe and America for prompt aid to the Russian people. Give bread and medicine.'
Review, 3866 words
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