From 1921 to 1923, Soviet Russia experienced an unprecedented famine.
The disaster affected more than 30 provinces of Soviet Russia, resulting in a population of up to 33.5 million, especially in the Volga River basin, Orenburg and other provinces became the hardest hit by famine.
In the midst of this predicament, Lenin published a letter to the international proletariat in Pravda on August 6, 1921, in which he sent letters to the governments of Europe and the United States, requesting the governments and peoples of Western countries, especially the working class, to provide food aid to Soviet Russia.
However, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, were always ambivalent about obtaining aid from Western countries in Europe and the United States.
On the one hand, after the October Revolution, the United States and the Entente were directly involved in armed intervention in an attempt to overthrow the Soviet regime, and although this attempt ultimately failed, the Western countries, led by the United States, implemented a policy of economic blockade and political isolation, which formed a certain obstacle to Soviet Russia.
Against this background, the call on Western countries to provide assistance to Soviet Russia was perceived as a possible opportunity for its activities against the Soviet regime.
As early as 1920, Lenin had a profound insight about the food aid of Western countries:
"Don't count on the help of the rich, the capitalists. Although the capitalist powers of Britain, the United States, and France expressed their willingness to help our hungry people, their aim was to use the famine to eliminate the freedom we had won through blood and sweat and to deprive the workers and peasants of power forever. 」
Yet, faced with the tragic spectacle of millions of starving people struggling to the brink of death, Lenin's Soviet government eagerly awaited aid from the West.
In a word, Lenin and others were both eager for the aid of Europe, the United States and Western countries, but also suspicious of it.
However, Soviet Russia did fall into the predicament of food shortage, and if it continued like this, it would starve to death without waiting for the European and American capitalists to attack.
After some consideration, Lenin decided to accept American aid, but with the need for an agreement.
On August 20, 1921, the Russian government and the United States Relief Administration formally signed an agreement to provide relief to the hungry.
Shortly after the agreement was signed, the first batch of relief supplies from the United States Relief Administration arrived in Soviet Russia.
To provide relief to the victims, the United States Relief Administration raised a total of $66 million throughout the famine.
By July 1, 1922, at the height of the famine, the United States Relief Administration had sent a total of 788878 tons of relief supplies to Soviet Russia, including grain, soybeans, peas, canned milk, sugar, cream, cocoa, medicines, and clothing.
This assistance reached 8.55 million people, including 3.25 million children and 5.3 million adults.
According to the Soviet Union's own statistics, the United States Relief Administration provided food aid to 48.5 percent of the poor in Russia, as well as pharmaceutical support to Russian hospitals and nurseries.
It was thanks to food and medicine assistance provided by the United States Relief Administration that millions of poor people on the brink of survival in Soviet Russia were protected from the threat of disease and death.
However, due to the opposition of social systems and ideologies, the Soviet government has always been on high alert against foreign aid agencies, fearing that these organizations may engage in espionage and sabotage activities in Russia.
At an internal meeting in December 1921, Stalin warned: "Do not forget that the aid organizations of Europe and the United States, although they come to the rescue in our own country, are also the spy organs of the world bourgeoisie. ”
It is precisely this suspicion that causes some friction in the cooperation between Soviet Russia and the United States Relief Administration.
According to the agreement signed between the two countries, the United States Relief Administration was given full freedom to choose Russian employees and to establish local relief agencies, mainly Soviet Russians.
This arrangement often caused unease in the Soviet government, which feared that such a free choice could lead to a loss of control over the activities of the United States Relief Administration in Soviet Russia.
The United States Relief Administration generally favors Russian intellectuals who have experience in society, but this group is limited in number.
After the October Revolution, many Russian intellectuals, including lawyers, professors, and doctors, left Russia, while many of the remaining were ostracized and suppressed by the Soviet government.
As a result, the few highly educated Russians, out of fear of being accused of counter-revolutionary activities or collusion with foreign capital, refused to work for the US Relief Administration.
Nevertheless, the local presences of the General Relief Service were eventually established.
In these local institutions, the majority of Russians came from the aristocratic and petty burgher classes.
As a result of this and other reasons, the Soviet authorities accused the United States Relief Administration of not paying attention to the class nature of the Russian employees in the first place.
In order to express dissatisfaction and assert authority, the arrest of Russian employees of the United States Relief Administration became a common method of the Soviet government.
In February 1922, the Russians announced the arrest of Arzamasksev, a Russian member of the General Directorate of American Relief in Tsaritsyn, on charges of counterrevolutionary activities, as evidenced by his history of supporting the White Guards in Tsaritsyn in 1919.
Boujian, head of the General Relief Administration of the Tsaritsyn region, told the Russian government that the arrest of Arzamastsev violated the terms of the agreement between the two sides.
But Soviet Russia was indifferent to this.
By the fall of 1922, when the famine had eased across Russia, the Russian government and the United States Relief Administration disagreed again over the goals of aid.
The Soviet government was more concerned with how to revive the economy than with just providing assistance to the hungry.
Kamenev stressed that for the Bolsheviks, the first task was to improve arable land, reform the transport system, minimize the likelihood of a grain failure, and not just feed the children to prevent them from starving to death in the next year.
However, there was a marked difference between the American Relief Administration's view of the goals of aid and that of the Soviet regime.
From the very beginning, the main task of coming to Russia was to help the hungry, not to help the Russians with agricultural cultivation and to improve and rebuild the economy.
After all, charities are specialized in emergency assistance, and it is difficult to be responsible for solving the problems of economic development in Soviet Russia.
What's the matter, charities come to emergency aid, and they can still be responsible for the economic development of your Soviet Russia?
Subsequently, the Russian government insisted that the United States Relief Administration provide not only medical and food assistance, but also tractors and other agricultural technology support.
The U.S. government categorically rejected such scoundrel and rogue demands.
However, even more unbelievable things continue to play out.
For the sake of so-called economic recovery, Soviet Russia went so far as to sell the grain exports aided by the United States for money when the famine was not over.
Although Kamenev claimed that the amount of grain exported by Russia was not large, when the United States learned of this, relations between the two sides completely deteriorated, and cooperation could not continue.
Even in Soviet Russia, there were objections to this act of exporting grain.
Bukharin, for example, said: "Grain exports cannot be developed at the expense of the lives of our Russians." ”
At a subsequent ministerial meeting, Zinoviev argued: "It is not appropriate for us to send part of our grain abroad and at the same time receive charitable relief from abroad." ”
Not only is it inappropriate, it is obviously shameless and shameless, and now it is a blatant resale of disaster relief food.
On June 14, 1923, the United States announced the end of its nearly two years of aid to the hungry in Soviet Russia.
Although the Soviet Government adopted a resolution on July 10, 1923, expressing its heartfelt gratitude to the people of the United States and to the United States Relief Administration for their assistance, stating that "the people of the Soviet Socialist Republic will always remember the help extended to them by the people of the United States through the United States Relief Administration".
Privately, however, the Soviets believed that the United States had impure motives for aiding Russia.
According to the currently declassified information bulletin, "the main purpose of the United States in supporting this aid work is to give the Russians a deeper understanding of the United States, and at the same time to use the large-scale campaign of assistance to the hungry as a means of propaganda against the Soviet system, and incidentally use the rescuers to gather and expand the Russian intelligence they need." There can be no doubt that the United States is trying to achieve a direct counter-revolutionary purpose through this organization and its espionage activities in Russia. ”
Finally, there is no conclusive evidence that relief organizations in Europe and the United States have engaged in misconduct in Soviet Russia, and no official disclosure of specific cases in Soviet Russia has been made.
If a similar incident had really occurred, I am afraid that Soviet Russia's style of acting in a "jealous and hateful" manner would have been reported long ago, so as to reveal the ugly features of European and American imperialism.
Since no case has been reported, then we have the right to give face to Europe and the United States as Soviet Russia.
However, the root cause of this famine was that the "surplus grain collection system" forcibly took away the rations and seed grains of the common people, and finally a series of contradictions broke out, triggering a famine.
However, when the famine was somewhat relieved and not over, Soviet Russia was impatient to sell the relief grain from Europe and the United States, in the name of restoring the economy.
So the question is, there is no problem in restoring the economy, why should we use the life-saving food of the Soviet Russian people to recover?