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Herbert Hoover's “Treaty” with Soviet Russia: August 20, 1921

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Benjamin M. Weissman
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In March 1921 Lenin predicted, “If there is a harvest, everybody will hunger a little and the government will be saved. Otherwise, since we cannot take anything from people who do not have the means to satisfy their own hunger, the government will perish.“ By early summer, Russia was in the grip of one of the worst famines in its history. Lenin's gloomy forecast, however, was never put to the test. At almost the last moment, substantial help in the form of food, clothing, and medical supplies arrived from a most unexpected source —U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.

Hoover undertook the relief of Soviet Russia not as an official representative of the United States government but as the head of a private agency —the American Relief Administration (A.R.A.).

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 1969 , pp. 276 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1969

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References

1. Lenin, V. I., “Doklad o zamene razverstki natural'nym nalogam,” March 15, 1921, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 43 (Moscow, 1963-64): 71.Google Scholar

2. For documentary references to the formation of the A.R.A. and its role as an instrument of American policy toward the Bolsheviks during the civil war and intervention, see Documents of the American Relief Administration: 1918-1922 (unpublished compilation, 24 vols., at the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford, Calif.), 2: 231, 310, 319; U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: 1919 (Washington, 1937), pp. 693–96 Google Scholar; The National Archives, Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Russia and the Soviet Union: 1910-1929 (hereafter cited as NA), file no. 861.48/1409. (Much of the State Department file for 1910-30 has been published on microfilm by the National Archives. References in this study are found on microcopy 316.)

3. Gorky to Fridtjof Nansen, July 13, 1921, cited in American Legation at Christiania to Secretary of State, July IS, 1921, NA 861.48/1501.

4. Hoover to Secretary of State, July 22, 1921, in Herbert Hoover Archives, Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, Calif., box no. 282, folder no. 6 (hereafter cited as HHA 282-6).

5. Herter to Poole, Department of State, July 23, 1921, HHA 282-16.

6. Poole to Herter, July 25, 1921, HHA 282-16.

7. Hoover to Gorky, Petrograd, July 23, 1921, HHA 254-16. Hoover's demand referred to seven Americans who were under detention in Russia, charged with offenses ranging from subversion to military espionage.

8. Gorky to Hoover, July 26, 1921, via Brown to Rickard, July 27, 1921, NA 861.48/ 1540 1/2.

9. Gorky to Hoover, July 28, 1921, in Komissiia po izdaniiu diplomaticheskikh dokumentov, Ministerstvo inostrannykh del SSSR, Dokumenty vneshnei politiki SSSR, 4 (Moscow, 1960): 246.

10. Hoover to Brown, Aug. 1, 1921, HHA 15-6.

11. Lenin to Kamenev, Aug. 5, 1921, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 53: 97.

12. Fisher, Harold H., The Famine in Soviet Russia, 1919-1923 (New York, 1927), p. 59–60.Google Scholar

13. Fischer, Louis, The Soviets in World Affairs (New York, 1960), pp. 176–77.Google Scholar

14. Lenin to Chicherin, Aug. 11, 1921, Dokumenty vneshnei politiki, 4: 781.

15. Rickard to Brown, Aug. 1, 1921, HHA 17-6.

16. Hoover to Brown, Aug. 3, 1921, HHA 17-6.

17. Hoover to Brown, Aug. 9, 1921, HHA 17-6.

18. Brown to Hoover, Aug. 10, 1921, and Hoover to Brown, same date, HHA 17-6.

19. Brown to Hoover, Aug. 13, 1921, HHA 17-7 and Fisher, Famine in Russia, p. 60.

20. Chicherin to Litvinov, Aug. 11, 1921, in Dokumenty vneshnei politiki, 4: 262. See also p. 781, n. 45, for comment that Lenin was referring to the Allied Council session in Paris and to the A.R.A.'s demands at Riga.

21. Lenin to Molotov, Aug. 11, 1921, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 53: 110.

22. Novyi put', Aug. 12, 1921, cited in HHA 82-4.

23. Brown to Hoover, Aug. 13, 1921, HHA 17-7.

24. Hoover to Brown, Aug. 15, 1921, HHA 17-7.

25. Lenin to Narkomindel and Pomgol, Aug. 13, 1921, Dokumenty vneshnei politiki, 4: 263.

26. Brown to Hoover, Aug. 13, 1921, HHA 17-7.

27. Brown to Hoover, Aug. 15, 1921 (no. 20), HHA 17-7.

28. Brown to Hoover, Aug. 15, 1921 (no. 21), iHHA 17-7.

29. Hoover to Brown, Aug. 15, 1921, HHA 17-7.

30. Brown to Hoover, Aug. 17, 1921, HHA 17-7.

31. Hoover to Brown, Aug. 16, 1921, HHA 17-7.

32. Hoover to Brown, Aug. 17, 1921, HHA 17-7.

33. Krasnaia gaseta, Aug. 18, 1921, as cited in Quarton to Secretary of State, Aug. 18, 1921, HHA 288-3.

34. Brown to Hoover, Aug. 17, 1921, HHA 17-7.

35. Brown to Hoover, Aug. 18, 1921, HHA 17-7.

36. New York Times, Aug. 18, 1921.

37. Chicherin to Litvinov, Aug. 19, 1921, Dokumenty vneshnei politiki, 4: 275-80.

38. Hoover to Brown, Aug. 18, 1921, HHA 17-7.

39. Brown to Hoover, Aug. 20, 1921, HHA 17-7.

40. New York Tribune, Aug. 21, 1921. 41. Segodnia (Riga), Aug. 21, 1921, as cited in HHA 17-7. 42. New York Times, Aug. 21, 1921. 43. Brown to Hoover, Aug. 27, 1921, HHA 243-7.

44. New York Tribune, Aug. 17, 1921.

45. Korovin, E. A., as cited in Triska, J. F. and Slusser, R. M., The Theory, Law, and Policy of Soviet Treaties (Stanford, 1962), p. 192.Google Scholar

46. For detailed accounts of the A.R.A. relief mission in Russia, see Fisher, Famine in Russia; Tsentral'naia komissiia pomoshchi golodaiushchim, Itogi bor'by s golodom v 1921-22 gg.: Sbornik statei i otchetov (Moscow, 1922); and Benjamin Weissman, “The American Relief Administration in Russia: A Case Study in Interaction Between Opposing Political Systems” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1968).