The Russian job : the forgotten story of how America saved the Soviet Union from ruin / Douglas Smith.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, [2019]Edition: First editionDescription: xi, 303 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780374252960
- 0374252963
- 9781250758118
- American Relief Administration -- History
- Food relief, American -- Soviet Union
- Food relief -- Soviet Union -- History
- Famines -- Soviet Union -- History
- Soviet Union -- History -- Famine, 1921-1922
- Soviet Union -- Foreign relations -- United States
- United States -- Foreign relations -- Soviet Union
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book | Dr. James Carlson Library | NonFiction | 947.0841 S645 | Available | 33111009411345 | ||||
Adult Book | Main Library | NonFiction | 947.0841 S645 | Available | 33111009564598 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
An award-winning historian reveals the harrowing, little-known story of an American effort to save the newly formed Soviet Union from disaster
After decades of the Cold War and renewed tensions, in the wake of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, cooperation between the United States and Russia seems impossible to imagine--and yet, as Douglas Smith reveals, it has a forgotten but astonishing historical precedent.
In 1921, facing one of the worst famines in history, the new Soviet government under Vladimir Lenin invited the American Relief Administration, Herbert Hoover's brainchild, to save communist Russia from ruin. For two years, a small, daring band of Americans fed more than ten million men, women, and children across a million square miles of territory. It was the largest humanitarian operation in history--preventing the loss of countless lives, social unrest on a massive scale, and, quite possibly, the collapse of the communist state.
Now, almost a hundred years later, few in either America or Russia have heard of the ARA. The Soviet government quickly began to erase the memory of American charity. In America, fanatical anti-communism would eclipse this historic cooperation with the Soviet Union. Smith resurrects the American relief mission from obscurity, taking the reader on an unforgettable journey from the heights of human altruism to the depths of human depravity. The story of the ARA is filled with political intrigue, espionage, the clash of ideologies, violence, adventure, and romance, and features some of the great historical figures of the twentieth century.
In a time of cynicism and despair about the world's ability to confront international crises, The Russian Job is a riveting account of a cooperative effort unmatched before or since.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Map -- Prologue: Mr. Wolfe's horrifying discovery -- 1921 -- 1922 -- 1923 -- A note on sources -- Select bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index.
"The harrowing, little-known story of the ARA, an American effort to save the newly-formed Soviet Union from a disastrous famine"--