We were a strange jumble of people. It was probably difficult to find workers at the time ā certainly several had no obvious qualifications for the job. There were some vague Tolstoyans of the garden-city type ā Russia had naturally attracted them, and if they were honest with themselves they were certainly disappointed. Here and there, there was an energetic dynamic personality whom the wild and lonely life well suited.1Francesca Wilson (relief worker in Russia)One could not explain to that heartbroken man (heartbroken is the right word here) that his life and his familyās depended on the charity of comfortable folk in England, men and women of the same Christian religion as himself, but whose faith and charity were subject to continual attacks by the mean-spirited everywhere. He could not be expected to understand that maybe a letter to the papers by some outraged peer, or a sermon by an indignant country parson, had condemned to death himself and all his family. We understood it, though, and it did not make life any easier for us to have this picture of our own countrymen always before us when listening to their desperate entreaties, watching their tears, tears of blood if that phrase has any meaning.2Ralph Fox (relief worker in Russia)
In 1921 the West was alerted to the burgeoning famine in one of the most fertile regions of communist Russia. Seven years of war, bad harvests and communist grain requisition had brought tens of millions of Russians to the point of starvation. Unable to deal with this overwhelming crisis, the Bolshevik government swallowed its pride and asked the West for help. The novelist Maxim Gorky and Patriarch Tikhon were persuaded to write to the famous humanitarian and polar explorer Fridjof Nansen and the archbishops of Canterbury and New York, in the hope that aid from the capitalist powers would follow. Nansen agreed that the famine was āa calamity almost without parallelā.3 The Prime Minister Lloyd George called it āthe most terrible affliction that has visited Europe or the world for centuriesā.4 Millions of dollars of aid was soon forthcoming from Europe and the USA, despite misgivings about helping the communist state. In Nansenās words, āone after another, a certain number of Governments and the majority of national Red Cross Societies and European philanthropic organisations entered the humanitarian crusadeā. 5
Humanitarians expanded their horizons and sharpened their tools to meet the challenge presented by the famine , but historians dispute the nature and consequences of their work.6 Relief workers were driven to travel to the famine region by idealism, but making their work reflect these ideals was difficult. Francesca Wilson wanted a more professional, less āVictorian,ā relief effort.7 Ralph Fox , along with many pacifists, leftists, Quakers , and others, hoped for a broader political shift in British society.8 Herbert Hoover ās relief aimed to show the superiority of American capitalism. Such desires were inseparable from the more tangible aim of feeding starving Russians. Millions were fed by the relief agencies, but the moral and political significance of this gesture, and the best methods, were strongly contested. Both the spectre of communism and more prosaic debates about the delivery of aid would shape the way these ideals actually translated into practice. By focusing mainly on the FWVRC , we can see how decisions about relief , such as where to operate, how to distribute, who to feed, and how to co-ordinate with the Soviet state, were made. It has been an argument of this book that the humanitarian attention given to Russia was the result of a number of distinct traditions, practices and contextually specific interests. This chapter shows the tensions between the aims of one organisation and the increasingly professionalised and standardised humanitarian sphere. It contextualises the evolving relief practices in the ideological aims of the relief agencies, the politics of helping communist Russia, and all within the dynamics of a complex system of humanitarian relief .
Ideology and Relief
The Friendsā Emergency and War Victimsā Relief Committee (FWVRC ) came into the famine with a distinct set of motivations, many of which were rooted as much in debates about the nature of Quakerism as in questions over humanitarianism, communism and capitalism. Following the Manchester Conference in 1895, British Quakerism took a āliberal turnā. The Doukhobor campaign would not be typical of future Quaker work; rather, war and famine relief would come to be the most prominent aspect of Quakerism , although concern for sects, Quakerism and personal religion more generally would echo through their work. Neither would missionary work, led by Evangelical Friends, be central to British Quakerism .9 Instead the growing militarism of Britain, shown first by the Boer War and then more decisively by the First World War, came to be the most pressing issue in Quaker eyes. This would move Quakerism away from its relatively easy identification with British liberalism , as in the 1891ā1892 famine work or the career of Robert Spence Watson .10 The First World War was not just an external problem that Quaker conscience extended to address; the conscription requirement raised personal and corporate dilemmas throughout the society. For some, the āalternative serviceā of medical work permitted by the conscription tribunals was a betrayal. In large part, though, Quakerism became increasingly identified with relief work.
Relief was meant to be an expression of Quakerism . Given the sectās qualms about organisation, this was not straightforward, in theory or practice. The efforts in Soviet Russia came at a time when Quaker humanitarian work was both being expanded and put onto a more permanent basis. The problem was that genuine concern would no longer necessarily be aligned with action. Quakers were wary of āstanding committeesā and permanent staffāexcepting the general Meeting for Sufferings āand tended to look at problems on a case-by-case basis.11 Quaker relief in Russia was undertaken by the FWVRC , revived to offer relief in the First World War.12 The continent-wide war put the FWVRC on a new footing. Quaker work was supposed to derive from individual āconcernā, yet the FWVRC worked in Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Poland, France and Germany. This raised the question of whether funds should be pooled and allocated to the most needy areas, or funds should be allocated based on the donorsā wishes.
Seen from the perspective of the FWVRC as a whole, the āRussian fieldā was not distinct and was shaped by resources as much as āconcernā, or even need. It was argued, for example, that the FWVRC should expand its operations in Russia in line with decline in France.13 The work of the FWVRC was therefore addressed as much to a general problem ...