The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How America Saved the Soviet Union from Ruin.

• Author: Earle, Renee M.

Title: Book Review : The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How America Saved the Soviet Union from Ruin by Douglas Smith Farrar, Straus and Giroux, November 2019

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In this gripping chronicle of the 1920-1923 Russia famine and American efforts to save the starving through the American Relief Administration (ARA), Douglas Smith succeeds in bringing the reader closer to understanding the apocalyptic conditions of Communist Russia at that time. Through pictures, letters and other archival material, he tells a story at once grisly in its depiction of dehumanizing despair that led to suicide, indiscriminate murder, and cannibalism but also uplifting as he introduces the work of Herbert Hoover and the men of the ARA who themselves risked health and life itself to save millions in the remotest regions of Communist Russia.

The story unfolds against the backdrop of persistent political calculations and suspicions on the part of both the West and Communist Russia. The "Red Scare" was in full swing in the U.S. as radical actions killed Americans. Communist leaders were unrelenting in their ruthless maneuvers and missteps as they tried to prevent access to the Russian people by what they perceived as a "Trojan Horse" designed to bring down their new government under the guise of famine relief. Meanwhile, debates among Americans and Western allies centered on whether official recognition of the new Soviet state would moderate or encourage the Bolsheviks.

In 1921, 30 million people in Communist Russia faced starvation. They froze, were lice infested, and diseased. Whole villages disappeared. Nevertheless, the Bolshevik Government often hesitated in sending relief in its drive to stay in power and bring about a new international social order. Smith shows that even Maxim Gorky's appeal to "humanitarians of the world" was a reluctant appeal.

Smith's "forgotten story" begins with a recap of Herbert Hoover's tremendous efforts in establishing "WWI's Marshall Plan," reaching not only allied countries but also defeated Germany and Austria-Hungary, in all, 32 countries. Based on purely humanitarian reasons, Hoover now championed unofficial relief for the starving under the Bolsheviks, whom he vehemently opposed politically.

Smith introduces an engrossing list of characters, leaders of the in-country ARA relief efforts, varied in their back grounds, alternating during their assignments between incapacitating recoil at the horrors they witnessed and optimism...