Let me just tell you that its a great pleasure to be invited here and part of this event. It is a distinct pleasure to be surrounded by so many hoovers. Ive never seen so many hoover s in one place. It looks like we are complete. We start this segment in the summer of 1921 and in that summer, soviet russia is the scene of a catastrophic famine, as george nash mentioned earlier, and millions are threatened with starvation and disease, most of them, as you will see any moment ill have a map up, situated in and beyond the vulgar river valley. The soviet government is unable to cope with the disaster on its own, so it is forced to allow an appeal to go out for and assistance and in that day, there is only one man on the planet in a position to answer that call, and that is the man that you see year, Herbert Hoover. As chairman of the American Relief administration, the ara. As george nash told us, the ara is a private relief organization, Relief Agency but i would say for this part of the story, we should say that its quasiprivate. Hoover is at this time the secretary of commerce in the administration in that will play a role in this story, as it spins out in the next few minutes. And that summer of 1921, after some very delicate negotiations, hoovers ara enters soviet russia to fight the great famine. In the end, millions would die in that famine, most soviet historians think the figure was at least 6 Million People would die in 1921, 1922. Other estimates go as high as 10 million. These are jets from, not outright starvation, most die from hunger related disease. But many more many millions, i should say, are saved by what the air is about to undertake. In fact, will do a flash forward. By the summer of 1922, american kitchens were feeding every day, so on the daily basis, 10 million citizens. I will come back to this map a little later, but you see how the food is going to get into the baltic ports up here, and coming into the black sea ports of here and here is where the famine is centered, also beyond the vulgar river valley, but this is where it is located. At the time, when this operation was unfolding, certainly by the summer of 1923 when it ends, the operation was hailed as the of war. It was all but forgotten and ignored and particular by americans, and at the very end today, i will explain how that happened. The official papers of the american believe it ministration, hundreds of manuscript boxes are located in the archives, on the stanford campus, that is where i did most of my research for four this episode, back in 1987. But i did need to come to west branch, i did twice, back in 1989, 1990, and approved to be essential for my research. I looked into diaries and personal letters of the americans who served in the mission. These are chiefly men, who are in their mid to late twenties. Their former though boys, such as this group here for and survived on the vuka. Most are gonna versatile graduates, most of them are real characters who are looking to continue the great adventure they add when they came over to serve in the great war. These young men, all of these men had, had great experiences with relief workers with the ara in places like poland, and austria. But the hardship that they encountered in Central Europe did not compared to the horrors they now witnessed in soviet russia. This was a genuine largescale famine, brought on by years of war and revolution, followed by a major drought in russias main green growing regions. This is a famine not of the cities, thats with the ara were used to in Central Europe, but thats in the countryside. The famine devastated the grain producers, the producers of the food, so this was a new ball game for the americans of the ara. So what kinds of things today encounter, what kinds of cited they see . A big thing that they discovered, as they arrived in the volga was that many people are trying to get out, some assume that would be in ukraine, ukraine was having its own famine in the south and they found people dying in large numbers, many of them dying at railway stations, such as this at a town, provincial town on the volga. The refugee problem, in other words, is enormous and they had to turn the tide in order to solve the problem. They also see, and there are a few slides in here, i think theres only three, but theyre a little bit difficult to look at. Okay, im going lightly on this kind of thing today. Heres one of them. Many of the young victims, and thats the central focus of course, especially for Herbert Hoover are suffering from edema, the extended stomach flu caused by the food substitutes. In fact, you can see some of the substitutes that were brought back from the americans who served in russia. They were in the museums, we saw them yesterday. What passes for food, you can see this in the museum, resembles a black or green bread. Usually it contains only the slightest bit of flour, the rest being grass or a similar agreement, children are vulnerable to that kind of food, substances that could sustain adults but could kill their offspring. The worst were in counted and childrens homes, were refugee children orphaned were taken in and the americans dreaded after a short time in the volga valley, dreaded going into these childrens homes, and were haunted by it. Children looked at the relief workers, with the americans in an absent sort of way. They expected kids to the pleading for bread, they seem to be beyond that point. So thats the scene going into the autumn of 1921. Herbert hoovers idea was to feed, only, im going to the square court thing, 1 million. That was increased by the time they signed an agreement, to 3 million children. They picture that the kitchens they would operate would look like this. This was the fall of 1921, and this was one of the largest kitchens, and it is in petra grad. 3 million children would have been the largest they are today, and they were thinking will be in the cities where the relief will be delivered and distributed and they pretty much thought it would be kept at 3 million. The facts on the ground, the types of scene that showed you in previous lads would soon transform the mission into something much more ambitious than hoover had contemplated. Hoover, was perceived at the time in those days as americas leading anti communist. His feeding in europe had the effect of stemming the tide bolsheviks them, as george nash said, it prevented it from spreading from bolsheviks russia. Hoover, acting in the same spirit, and the other statesman of the day assumed that food could stop the spread of the disease of bolsheviks from, which was believed to be called by an empty stomach. For stomachs, and you put a stop to bolsheviks them. Food relief inside of soviet russia might help to bring the russian people to it senses, bring them some stuff and bring down the government. These attitudes were very wellknown to soviet officials. Linen, not least among them, so its no surprise that the relief workers get, there despite the fact they had a good contract in agreement that they signed comment. They find it difficult to get the cooperation of soviet officials. The ara, these young guys, they expect this. They expect obstructionism on the part of the bolsheviks, and they know that linens government had allowed herdsman out of desperation. They reveal this after 1991, the soviet union collapses, and shows that hoover and his colleagues were initially absolutely paranoid about what this guy might try to pull off inside the homeland of communism. Anything seemed possible, right . This guy could do it. The kremlin, or the bolsheviks in the kremlin had good reason to being on their guard, although those fears were quickly dissipated. His relief workers kept strictly to business, and did not try as the bolsheviks phrased it to use food as a weapon, by feeding and tassel v8 elements. Still, the very presence of an American Relief organization operating inside soviet russia constituted a dangerous threat. Aside from the soviet government being embarrassed about having to be buildup by Herbert Hoover and his ara, the example of American Energy and efficiency was feared might give some russians the wrong idea about the wisdom of the communist experiment. So the baltic sixth the ballistic authorities gave comparisons of control. That inspired the title this top, i dont have any americans ever said it that way, but that was the exclamations of disbelief that came out of it. Hoover was convinced that the soviet experiment, after four years, was destined to be short lived. The famine seem to be a deaf note. There was no official u. S. Diplomatic relation with the soviet union. That will come, by the way, only after president Herbert Hoover would leave office in 1933. And, as i say, initially, hoover wanted to restrict the relief to feeding children, and the idea was to come up with daily meals that consisted of some combination of beans, rice corn, milk, cocoa, lard and sugar. Did i mention cocoa . Cocoa is huge with these kids, dont have time to go into that. So feeding children, thats a hoover hallmark, but the American Workers on the ground see the enormity of the catastrophe, and their reports at russia tell hoover that much more is required, how can we feed the children and that the parents die . And the other things that might result and huge numbers of orphan children and russia will be saddled with that problem going in from other decades. So these reports, that the americans send out and which reach Herbert Hoover set the stage for the dramatic extension of the mexican in the winter of 1921, 22, herbert listened to those please and ask the president harding to approach the u. S. Congress with a request for an appropriation of 20 Million Dollars. Eventually, all the million would add up to about 60 Million Dollars, translates to about 900 Million Dollars today. 60 Million Dollars, and the 20 million, the congressional appropriation would be used to purchase corn. Very important, very important. Seed, wheat seed, that will be sent to soviet russia. The essential story of the mission and the book i wrote about this mission is how the ara, backed by this congressional appropriation of 20 Million Dollars undertakes a Massive Campaign to transport, currency, from the american midwest to the russian heartland. Thereby, breaking the back of the famine and securing the harvest of 1922. So, lets go to a different map. You can see, this is a big picture map. Whoops, i have a blank. There we go. We have a little bit tighter and you see you have the baltic perks up here and the black sea ports up here, sorry, i have no time to get into these ports of the north will freeze it is a race against the clock to get and before they do, not always successful. You see these are the transport lines here from moscow going out. You see the volga river, sneaking down here. This is where most of the slides im showing you come from. In a few minutes will go out here in the mountains. Will move the supplies, and will get them to the victims, we have to get the seed out there before the corn arrives, so the seed will be planted no, we have to get the corn out there before the seed arrives so the seed will not be consumed by the presence. But this will take time. In the meantime, soviet citizens are dying by the hundreds of thousands every week. This is the most difficult image i will show you today. This is a sitting on the volga. It becomes stalingrad. Today, it is volgagrad. The delivery of the relief proves to be a tremendous logistical challenge. When you look back and you see how many things could have gone wrong, this mission could have easily failed instead of becoming the crowning achievement of hoover relief in wartime and postworld war ii period. The obstacles to success were many. It starts with this. The key physical obstacle, aside from the russian winter, the state of russias railroads, european russia is scarred with what the americans call locomotive graveyards, like this. Rows of rusted and dilapidated locomotives. They had gone unused for years, the tinders are they are resting there like sleeping monsters. At one point in march of 1922, there is near disastrous jam up of corn trains. You can do this. Corn trains here. You see the backup going, and especially right here. The Railway Lines cannot handle the load. Hoover anticipated this. He worried about this. The central drama is how against all odds, and after that nearly disastrous jam up of corn trains west of the volga, in march of 1922 the lifesaving corn and wheat seed begins arriving in the villages. And it is the nick of time. The way they get from the railheads to the villages surprises some people. This is a photograph i used on the cover of my book. These are camels. You can see down there. This is the volga river. It is frozen. One of the advantages to the russian winter, right . People are surprised in this story i was when i first began to research this story, how many camels were appearing in various places. There were striking images throughout the archives of horse caravans, camel caravans, mixed caravans, oxen. Camels, though, survived longer than the horses. Horses died early and in large numbers. Camels proved to be a a hardier sort. At that time, up into the lower volga and north. So, when the food arrives, remember that petrograd kitchen i showed you earlier . It looks neat and clean and sort of urban. This is more typical of the type of kitchen that the a. R. A. Was serving in, in the villages. I love this photo. This is a different kitchen i am about to show you. This is an exterior shot, and here is an interior shot here. Look at this girls face in the middle here. Striking photograph. Briefly, but it has to be mentioned, the a. R. A. For its first time in its existence, conducted a medical program in russia. The conditions demanded it. Simply, russian medicine could not handle the medical emergency or medical famine, as the americans called it. An important part of that program was an inoculation drive of both adults and children. So the adults, there are the kids right there. Brave little boy. This vaccine was employed to immunize against cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. And very important part of the program. The mission would stay in russia for a second year. After they secure the harvest they stay on for a second year at a much reduced scale. The harvest of 1922, very successful. But still, and one argument for staying was that they could not avoid what some of the a. R. A. Men saw from the beginning as inevitable, and that is an orphan problem. Despite this a. R. A. s best intentions and despite the feeding of many adults, there are many orphans. I would not try to put a number on it. Waif children such as these who roamed the cities into the 1920s, roamed the cities in packs like wild animals. The problem becomes so acute it will last until the end of the decade, and a stalin has an idea of how to put an end to that. It is called the fiveyear plan. Those kids end up working in factories. Another orphan shot. This was the autumn of 1921. The reason i want to show you that photograph is that american is working for the a. R. A. His name is vernon kellogg. He was Herbert Hoovers biology teacher at stanford, and hoover drafted him to become a very important figure relief in belgium. And with the a. R. A. A very striking photo otherwise, but i wanted you to see vernon kellogg. So, millions will die. Millions were saved. This is one of two official a. R. A. Posters that were distributed inside soviet russia during the a. R. A. Mission. And it is quite possible that hoovers mission saved the bolshevisk regime from utter collapse. This is a point of speculation. I think it will keep coming back in waves. The first person in print to speculate about this as a historian was George Kennan in the 1950s. Did hoover let them off the hook . Would the bolshevisk regime have fallen if the americans had not come in and saved the day . Hoovers conservative critics at home during the mission were after him about this. In part, the congressional appropriations were a little difficult to get through. It is going to happen, but he had to really nudge some people on capitol hill. In part, the conservative critics wondered why, as one line in a newspaper put it, we would give soup to nuts. You get the picture, right . Meanwhile, many liberals and leftist radicals accused hoover of trying to use relief as a tool to overthrow bolshevisk power. For those people, antibolshevism seriously diluted the sincerity of his humanitarianism. The fact is in understanding hoovers motives, not to most western statesmen at the time, bolshevism was a symptom of people in distress. Thus fighting bolshevism was itself humanitarian. Hoover hoped that the a. R. A. Example of its energy, efficiency, these posters were distributed in the tens of thousands across soviet russia, so the image of american benevolence is spread. He hoped that would serve to further discredit what he called the foolish soviet economic system, in the eyes of the soviet people. And perhaps serve to catalyze the inevitable political healing process. As i said a little earlier, and i am going to bring this up in a different context, soviet officials from lennon on down were very aware of this danger. So they set up a hierarchy system of secret police minders that were sent from moscow into the provinces, and even down to the town and village level to keep an eye on the americans, ostensibly to assist, but often times it ended up being obstruction or just getting in the way. Local soviet officials also kept a close eye on the americans. This is in a place that i pointed out to you. It is beyond the volga in the euro mountains. The man in the middle is william kelly. The man on the left is the soviet official, the secret police guy, from moscow. The guy on the right is the local official. Kelly did not have a very good opinion of these two individuals. That smile on his face, i think, says a lot. The supervision, the obstructionism of the soviets exasperated the relief workers, who found most soviet officials not up to the job. These are former, something other than government officials, who after the revolution inherent or come into very big jobs. The a. R. A. Men realize that they just cant do it. They see themselves very much in Herbert Hoovers image. They are engineers executing the business of relief, and they were also spreading the benign influence of american efficiency. And for me, fascinating, and i write about this in the book, peculiarities of the russian environment seem to have magnified the crusading spirit of the relief workers. There is zeal for spreading their particular idea of civilization, for how things work. They grew more fervent in proportion to the level of passivity and inefficiency they came up against in russia. One example is, and it is one of my favorites, is william kelly. Bill kelley, native of kentucky. Went to be a journalist for the associated press. Associated press. As i said, he was stationed in a remote region beyond the volga, the edge of siberia. We have at the hoover archives every single letter he wrote, and he wrote every few days, to a colleague in new york. And those letters are, i mean, they are they give tremendous insight into what is going on. At times, they are laugh out loud funny as kelly describes what he is seeing. I knew immediately when i found this cache of letters that had not been discovered, i had a character to focus on. In those letters, kelly found little cause for optimism about the caliber of local officials that he had to contend with. He allowed, in one letter, that the men running the kremlin might be ruthlessly efficient, but that was beside the point. Were they all hoovers, they could do little to improve the general situation working through the existing personnel in the provinces. And to bring the matter alive for correspondant, he employs americans points of references. Is the government here conducted efficiently . The board of alderman of any town could be counted on to administer the provinces better than their present executives. I have tested their knowledge of their own territories, of their institutions, of their resources, and i avow that with rare exceptions, they are incompetent to conduct the affairs of a Small Town Grocery store. Sure enough, a lot of American Relief workers had that opinion of the officials they were dealing with. And these were guys in their 20s. They are kings of the world in their particular kingdoms. Kelly came from a district the size of france. They were feeding at one point 1. 6 Million People. So life and death decisions are theirs. I will prove the numbers thing to you. I know this slide is dark, but i had to include it. What we are seeing is the famine relief in the district. September 10, 1922. 1. 6 million. And this is a breakdown. This photo was taken indoors by an amateur. Each american district had a physician assigned to it, and he took this photo. Can you see who that is . It is Herbert Hoover. From up here, it may not be as easy to see. It is Herbert Hoover. Think about it, the urals, who had some mining interests there before the war, all of those contacts were broken off. The rumors that hoover was there trying to revive business, were nonsense. But hoovers image in that photo in particular shows up in many background a. R. A offices. The reason i like that is the chief is their right above these tremendous totals. In fact, and this is what i will end with, researching the a. R. A. Records, and i started doing this in 1987, and so my image of Herbert Hoover was of the other Herbert Hoover. I kept thinking Herbert Hoover the postpresidency. I did not have a strong sense of how hoover related to or how the people who worked under him related to him. Reading the records, reading the private letters, the diaries of the americans who served, you get a sense of their ferocious feeling of loyalty toward hoover. They would follow him into any battle, right . Hoover, it is a word i have used before, and people say, you must be talking about somebody else. But hoover had a quiet charisma, which for most americans has been obliterated by the Great Depression and what comes afterwards. But hoover, a man of few words, exerted that kind of Magnetic Pull on the men who served under him. I dont think we said his nickname. He was known as the chief. They referred to hoover in their letters as the chief. The men of the a. R. A. , generally speaking, saw themselves as practical idealists in the hoover mode. They were engineer administrators who prided themselves on an efficient and hardheaded dispensation of relief using strict accounting practices. It is one thing that flummoxed soviet officials. They could not figure out why the americans were taking such records. There must be some active espionage behind this, right . What is the point . This was the hoover way. You counted for everything that went in, who got it, and you make sure to give the American People the proper accounting of where their money went. Most of these Young Americans professed to be animated by a sense of loyalty to the man. They did this openly in their communications. One of them, a man who served on the volga, recalled, during the difficult and frequently dangerous days of the a. R. A. Mission to the baltic and later the Russian Mission, it was only necessary to say the chief wants it done, and in this particular way, that was that. Not only for me, but for all the men i knew who served in those missions. A singularly undivided loyalty. In fact, few workers ever met the man, or had ever up until that point met the man, but they knew what he personified, and many were intensely loyal to that idea. Another relief worker wrote from moscow in the summer of 1922 to a colleague back home. There is a saying among the a. R. A. Men that once you tie up with hoover, you can never quite shake him off. And he also wrote that when the frustrations of the Russian Mission seemed about to overwhelm them, the relief workers told themselves to do it for hoover, and pressed on. I showed you a poster before distributed across russia. They held a competition to create a poster that would serve the a. R. A. Across russia. They could not decide between the one you saw earlier and this one. The ship, quite an image, the flag back there. Notice the rows of corn. This says america to starving russia. This is a real winner. I will use this poster to explain how this remarkable episode slipped into relative obscurity. There are two dimensions. On the soviet side, after the a. R. A. Withdrew from soviet russia in the summer of 1923, its reputation and its legacy were vulnerable to every kind of soviet slander. As it turned out, hoover had been wrong about one big thing. Fighting the famine was not going to bring down the bolshevisks. The fact is, by 1921, the soviet regime had wiped out all potential alternatives to bolshevisk power. Soviet communism, we now know, was there to stay for another seven decades. By the 1930s, and this would be under stalin, the party instructed that the purpose of hoovers a. R. A. In russia had been espionage under the cover of philanthropy. For the most part, the a. R. A. Mission was purposefully ignored by the soviet authorities, and thus slowly forgotten by the soviet people. That is the soviet side. On the american side, within a decade of the soviet famine, the Great Depression would eclipse Herbert Hoovers reputation as the great humanitarian. Hoovers undoing and the depression it south would deal a devastating blow to the a. R. A. Ethos until 1929, hoover was seen to embody individualism, and cando optimism. They werent destroyed but they had lost their aura of invincibility. Thank you. applause wednesday night on American History tv, beginning at 8 pm eastern a look at the Great Depression, founded in 1933 during the Great Depression the Tennessee Valley mission was to address Environmental Energy and Economic Development issues in regions suffering from floods, poverty, and unemployment. A National Program in the Tennessee Valley is a 1936 film created by the tv aide to show the construction of two projects. Lawyers to him in tennessee and wheeler dam in alabama. Both are still operational and on the National Register of historic places. Watch American History tv wednesday night and over the weekend on cspan 3. Next to look at the policies are Franklin Roosevelt and hoover, on wartorn europe in the 19 thirties and forties. What they did about the plight of victims of war, especially women and children. This is the title for my new book called the battle royale, hoover versus roosevelt. Im going to show you two images first. This is the first one from the America First committee, which was isolationist. Here, we will take a look at these two and go back. These are from the committee to defend america