Lot 222
Russia
Fascinating Large Archive of Food Relief to Starving Russia, with Illuminating Eyewitness Accounts of Post-WWI Russia
[AMERICAN RELIEF ADMINISTRATION Archive of 40 documents related to Arthur Ruhl’s service as an ARA inspector in Russia, 1922-1924. Most typewritten or carbon copy letters and memoranda; also some handwritten letters. Most documents are in English, but the archive contains one each in Russian, French, German, and Polish. 96 pp., 8" x 5.25" to 8" x 13". Some edge damage or slight tears to a few documents. Most very good.
On February 24, 1919, the U.S. Congress formed the American Relief Administration (ARA) with a budget of $100 million, supplemented by another $100 million in private donations. From 1919 to 1922, the ARA delivered more than four million tons of supplies to twenty-three war-torn European countries.
In 1921, after a famine in Russia, the ARA negotiated with the Soviet government to provide relief supplies. Congress appropriated $20 million through the Russian Famine Relief Act of late 1921. The ARA provided supplies to Russia until June 1923. At its peak, the ARA employed 300 Americans and more than 120,000 Russians to feed 10.5 million people daily. The director of the ARA’s Russian operations was Col. William N. Haskell (1878-1952). The medical division of the ARA also helped overcome the typhus epidemic in Russia at the time.
From 1921 to 1923, journalist Arthur Ruhl served as an ARA inspector in Russia. This archive consists of retained copies of letters and reports Ruhl wrote, as well as letters to him during his service in Russia.
Excerpts
Perrin C. Galbin to Arthur Ruhl, March 24, 1922, New York, New York:
“We wish to confirm to you your selection as a member of the American Relief Administration for overseas service. In all probability you will be sent to Russia, but as all our overseas personnel is under the control of our London headquarters, we are unable to say exactly where your service will be most needed at the time of your arrival in London.. .. Your salary will be $200. a month, effective from the day of your sailing, and a subsistence allowance of $6. a day is granted on station. Actual travelling expenses are paid by the American Relief Administration.”
Arthur Ruhl to William N. Haskell, re Petrograd, May 24, 1922, Moscow, Russia:
“it did strike me that three months was rather an unreasonable time for possible recipients to be asked to wait. If food packages are really needed and are not a pleasant remembrance, a wait of three months might be rather serious.... While the district itself seems to be running satisfactorily, conditions at the port left, at the time of my departure, May 23, a good deal to be desired.... The most acute condition was encountered in disposing of the medical supplies. This stuff as you know comes off in packages of all sizes and weights and iron operating tables loosely crated and iron beds, glass demijohns filled with liquid, bales of bandages and boxes of salts weighing perhaps two hundred pounds and boxes of empty bottles most of which, to judge by the sound they make, are already broken, all are piled hit or miss on the dock....It would not have taken any great amount of expert intelligence or indeed anything much more than a housewife’s commonsense to have seen to it that the stuff was piled in a less dangerous fashion and to have prevented the well-meaning but ignorant stevedores from baggage smashing.. ..
William N. Haskell to Arthur Ruhl, “Confidential,” May 31, 1922, Moscow, Russia:
“On your trip to Samara and Ufa, please look into the following in addition to ordinary matters:...I am very anxious to impress on all our men that under no circumstances are they to have any dealings whatsoever with the Russian Red Cross. If by any chance they are assisting in the distribution of any supplies belonging to the Russian Red Cross or are giving over to the Russian Red Cross any American supplies for distribution by them it must be stopped at once and an explanation made as to why this action was taken. This applies to all organizations but with particular force to the Russian Red Cross.... It appears to me that Colonel Bell is attempting to spread out his work too far especially to the northeast. While we are desirous of covering all the country possible with the means at hand, still there is a limit to everything and each step further out only brings cries from those places still further and if we don’t watch ourselves we will be in the middle of China in our relief work....”
Arthur Ruhl to William N. Haskell, June 5, 1922, Ufa, Russia:
“I arrived here Saturday, June 3rd, three days out from Moscow and am leaving this evening for a look at some of the new work east of here.... I hope to be back here in something less than a week and then to go to Orenburg....”
Travel Orders for A. B. Ruhl by Walter L. Bell, June 5, 1922, Ufa, Russia:
“Mr. A. B. Ruhl, Headquarters A. R. A., Russian Unit, Moscow, at present on an inspection trip through this region, will visit Zlatoust, Polytayvo, Tschelybinsk, Troitze, Koustanai, Ekaterniburg [Ekaterinburg, Perm and other places within this district.”
This archive includes a copy of these orders in Russian.
Walter L. Bell (1874-1946) was the District Supervisor for the American Relief Administration in the Ufa district.
Arthur Ruhl to William N. Haskell, Memo re: Samara, Ufa, Orenburg, June 27, 1922, Moscow, Russia:
“Work seems to be going on satisfactorily everywhere but when one says that the famine is broken one is of course using a relative term. The famine as a nation wide calamity has indeed been broken but this does not mean that many are not dying of starvation now and will not continue to die in the coming weeks and months. Even today in Ufa they pick up an average of ten corpses about the railroad station (these are Dr. Sloan’s figures) and every time that I went to the station I saw several bundles of rags lying face down in the dirt in the little park just across from the station.. .. Again, there are large numbers of people in hospitals, especially children, for whom not much can be done. In one hospital in Tcheliabinsk, for instance, I saw a whole room full of babies all of whom looked wretchedly and a certain number of whom were simply laid aside as beyond hope.. .. Various other instances might be cited to support the statement that the breaking of the famine in the large sense does not meant that there will not even with a good crop and the best distribution possible under the circumstances be a certain amount of starvation and a great deal of suffering during the coming winter.”
Arthur Ruhl to Cyril J. C. Quinn, July 24, 1922, Tsaritsyn (formerly Stalingrad, now Volgograd), Russia:
“I might remark, in passing, that here in Tsaritzen, we must remember that we are dealing with a backward neighborhood of Russia (somewhat like that round Orenburg) where there never was any intelligent class in the Moscow sense of the word, and where there are still fewer now. There is the same difference in doing relief work here and doing it in Moscow, or in some of the richer, more civilized governments, as there would be, for example, in doing similar work in eastern Massachusetts, let us say, and doing it in parts of New Mexico or Wyoming. One must expect (and possibly make allowance for) a certain amount of inefficiency and general cussedness, due simply to ignorance, provincialism, and small-town gossip and intriguing.... In short, the [obscured word(s) which went with acute famine conditions is passing; the gift-horse is being subjected to a rather determined dental gaze, and the powers are looking forward to a time when they will again be running their own show without interference from outsiders. It does not follow because the authorities are beginning, figuratively and literally to feel their oats, that there is not need among the people, but at the same time it would obviously be inadvisable to continue relief in neighborhoods, where, for whatever reason, relief were beginning to be treated as if it were superfluous.”
Cyril J. C. Quinn (1893-1974) was William N. Haskell’s deputy in Moscow for the American Relief Administration and acting head in Haskell’s absence.
Arthur Ruhl to Cyril J. C. Quinn, “Notes on inspection trip to Tsaritzen, Astrahkan, Novorossiak, Theodosia, Rostov and Kharkov, made between July 17 and August 12, ’22,” August 1922, Moscow, Russia:
“THEODOSIA [Feodosia...Mr. Kohl said that by the end of the first week in August he would be feeding 20,000 children and that by the 15th he should be feeding 50,000. He expected to finish feeding corn by the end of August and inasmuch as he had protection for child-feeding for four months and started a month late, he could exceed the 50,000 number.”
Tracy Kohl (1894-1980) of Nebraska was the District Supervisor for the American Relief Administration in the Theodosia district.
Arthur Ruhl to Cyril J. C. Quinn, September 6, 1922, Samara, Russia:
“While here, Hayden recognized in the A.R.A. office a young lady, formerly of Petrograd, whom he at one time helped to provide with some sort of fake papers on which, if I am not mistaken, she is still living. She is one of the most valued employes of the Samara office. According to Allen, he tipped off the local Cheka people – Allen surmises that he is now a Cheka man himself – and a local agent came round to the girl’s house and tried to blackmail her for a hundred million roubles. She was told not to mention the matter to anyone in the A.R.A. office, but she came to Allen in an endeavor to borrow part of the money, and he told her not to worry and not to pay any attention to the demand. Up to the present nothing more has come of it.... I am leaving tonight for Saratov, and expect to be back in Moscow about the 12th to 14th. I have a good many general impressions of this and that along the way, and several minor suggestions, but it can all probably wait until I get back to Moscow.”
Cheka was a Soviet secret police organization for the investigation of counter-revolutionary activities. From its formation in 1917 until its dissolution and reorganization in 1922 as the GPU and then the OGPU, Cheka put to death tens of thousands of enemies and perceived enemies of the revolutionary government.
Ronald H. Allen (1891-1949) was the District Supervisor for the American Relief Administration in the Samara district.
Arthur Ruhl to William N. Haskell, “Notes on a trip from Nizhni-Novgorod down the Volga to Saratov,” September 16, 1922, Moscow, Russia:
“The toilets in several of the houses I have visited on these trips is a disgrace.... The Americans in A.R.A. work are marked men, inevitably; in the districts where Americans have been little seen heretofore, they stand as examples of American culture and civilization and they owe it to their country if not to themselves to keep their houses ship-shape and in order.... While it is true, of course, that it would be fatal for A.R.A. men to mix in politics...there is yet another aspect of the matter. One of the accessory aims of the A.R.A. work is the cultivation of good feeling toward America and Americans. When we leave Russia finally we want to leave behind a memory that will make the relations between Russia and America better, if possible, than they were before. This ought to come on inevitably from doing our job of feeding the starving and doing it well.”
“SARATOV:- Other matters were overshadowed for the moment here by the trial and conviction of the four A.R.A. employees for selling corn and appropriating the proceeds. This matter was not handled very well from the beginning, when lack of American supervision permitted a carload of corn to be sold on the market without any American being aware that a considerable part of it was good corn, to the writing of the letter to the Russian authorities just before the trial.”
Arthur Ruhl to William N. Haskell, September 30, 1922, Kiev, Russia [Ukraine:
“From what I see and hear in Kiev I am inclined to think that a certain injustice is done the town if child-feeding in kitchens goes on in other cities. While the district is not in the famine neighborhood theoretically, this does not help the city population very much. There is little business in the city, much unemployment, and by no means all the more or less helpless children are in institutions. One “Dietski Sad,” for instance, run by two ladies I know personally has had practically to close since the food was cut off. It acted as a sort of creche and school for some thirty or forty children of the neighborhood, who were desperately poor and most of them orphans or half orphans. They spent their days at the ‘garden’ and got dinner and some schooling, and then bunked with various kindly neighbors at night. When I visited the place two little children bundled up in all the clothes they had were playing about the unheated rooms, and the ladies, almost in rags, were fearing that the place would have to close altogether. If they had A.R.A. food they said they might perhaps get someone else to supply enough wood etc., to keep the school going.”
Arthur Ruhl to William N. Haskell, October 4, 1922, Odessa, Russia [Ukraine:
“With Mr. Forbes, I dropped in yesterday to meet the new Soviet representative here, Mr. Valeskhan, whom Mr. Forbes finds, by the way, well-intentioned and helpful.... I said that the program had, of course, been much reduced, and the personnel, both American and Russian, much cut down; that in some place feeding in kitchens had been largely given up for feeding in institutions; that it was naturally the aim of the A.R.A. to prepare things so that its work might be eventually taken over and carried on, as far as possible, by Russians.... [conditions of the Odessa district, especially to the east of Odessa, were very bad, and that deaths among the children from starvation had already begun.”
Order of William N. Haskell, November 9, 1922, Moscow, Russia:
“Mr. Arthur Ruhl is released from duty with the Russian Unit as of November 9th.... Transportation will be furnished Mr. Ruhl to London, England.”
Arthur Ruhl to Raymond H. Sawtelle, December 12, 1922, New York, New York:
“Of the amount credited to me by the A.R.A. as the result of my service with the Russian Unit I should like to turn back into the A.R.A. fund for Russian relief the sum of $1500.”
Raymond H. Sawtelle (1884-1949) served as secretary and treasurer of the American Relief Administration.
Memorandum of Arthur Ruhl to William N. Haskell, December 12, 1922, New York, New York:
“During my visits to various district headquarters last summer I frequently heard District Supervisors express the wish for more funds for general relief. There were always particularly needy cases—old professors out of a job and the like—for whom there was no specific fund available. It occurs to me that the $1500 now being turned in might be applied to this sort of relief and distributed among the various districts as you think best.”
Henry Beeuwkes to Arthur Ruhl, February 7, 1923, Moscow, Russia:
“Thank you very much for allowing me to select beneficiaries for your food packets (Bulk Sale 702). Those whom I have selected are from Moscow gubernia or city and are, in the main, doing scientific work rather than the actual practice of medicine. They are all needy and I am sure that your food packets will be a Godsend to them.. .. Investigations which we are making at present indicate that, though actual famine conditions are relieved, the nutrition of the general population is very poor and the children in Moscow now applying for feeding have a lower Pelidisi than those who were fed a year ago. The winter is mild but there is obviously much suffering due to lack of warm clothing.”
Dr. Henry Beeuwkes (1881-1956) was the director of medical relief for the American Relief Administration. He was a colonel in the medical corps of the U.S. Army and received the Army Distinguished Service Medal for his role as inspector of hospitalization of troops in the field during World War I.
Pelidisi is a measure of malnutrition based on the weight and sitting height of an individual. In a normal individual the measurement should be approximately 100. Those with an index under 94 are considered undernourished. The pelidisi measurement was developed by Dr. Clemens von Pirquet (1874-1929) of Vienna for the Hoover Relief Commission in Austria after World War I. Many American doctors criticized the method because it failed to consider many other factors that could affect nutrition.
Mowatt M. Mitchell to Whom It May Concern, June 13, 1923, London, England:
“This is to certify that the bearer, Mr. Arthur Ruhl, is an official of this Administration, and is proceeding to Russia on the business of this Administration. Mr. Ruhl’s baggage consists solely of his personal effects and official packages which he is carrying for the American Relief Administration, which under the Chairmanship of Mr. HERBERT HOOVER. It is requested that all possible assistance and courtesy be extended to Mr. Ruhl at frontier points and elsewhere in order to facilitate his journey.”
This archive includes copies of this letter in French, German, and Polish.
Mowatt M. Mitchell (1887-1980`) was assistant director of European operations for the American Relief Administration from 1921-1923, stationed in London.
Morris Bishop to Arthur Ruhl, July 5, 1923, Ithaca, New York:
“An American Natural History Museum is anxious to get hold of one of the two specimens of an extinct cormorant named Carbo Perspicillatus, both of which are in the Petrograd Museum. The Museum does not wish to be named in connection with the affair, but I am assured by responsible people that they will pay $3000 for this cuckoo’s corpse. What you are to do is to find out who can withdraw one of these birds from the Museum, or steal it therefrom, and promise him enough and not too much. My idea is that you offer him say $1000, more if necessary, and then we will divide what is left of the $3000.... Here is a possible procedure. You find out whether there is any chance of the authorities listening to reason or bribes. Let me know; I will try to get a binding promise in writing from the right person to pay for the bird on its delivery in good condition at the N. Y. Museum. I will also send you a facsimile of the bird in colors so that you won’t have a bald-headed buzzard handed you. Then we will get our commission and spend it.”
Morris Bishop (1893-1973) was a professor of romance literature and later University historian at Cornell University, his alma mater.
The spectacled cormorant (Phalacrocorax perspicillatus) is an extinct marine bird that lived on Bering Island in the far northeast of Russia. It is the largest species of cormorant known to have existed and likely went extinct around 1850.
Ruhl attempted to purchase one of the birds but was unsuccessful.
Nellie Brown Ruhl to Arthur Ruhl, October 1, 1923, Rockford, Illinois:
“I wonder where you are to day. I had so hoped this birthday would be spent at least in this country if not at home. You seem so far, far away.... Your interesting letter from Petrograd came to day so satisfying to get such a picture of conditions.”
Nellie Brown Ruhl (1856-1932) was Arthur Ruhl’s mother. She married his father Antes S. Ruhl (1851-1942) in 1875 in Winnebago County, Illinois.
Notice of Informal Talk at Harvard University, April 21, 1924, Cambridge, Massachusetts:
“Arthur Ruhl, ’99, who served with the A.R.A. in Russia in 1922 and 1923 will give an informal talk on actual conditions existing in Russia in the present day. Mr. Ruhl is peculiarly well equipped to speak on this subject, for in addition to having traveled over European Russia as a General Inspector for the A.R.A., he was there before the revolution as a correspondent and has written books on that country and the Baltic Provinces. His talk will deal largely with the material conditions – cities, railroads, postal service, hotels, theatres, museums, factories, trade, etc., and he will touch briefly on the moral and intellectual changes which the revolution has brought.”
Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was born in Iowa into a Quaker family, but both of his parents died before he was ten years old. After living with relatives in Iowa and Oregon, Hoover became one of the first students to attend newly established Stanford University, from which he graduated in 1895. Hoover worked as a mining engineer in California, Australia, and China. He became an independent mining consultant in 1908 and traveled the world until the outbreak of World War I, building his reputation and fortune. When the war began, he helped organize the return of 120,000 Americans from Europe and spearheaded humanitarian relief efforts in Belgium, from his administrative base in London. After the United States entered the war, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover to head the U.S. Food Administration. He lobbied for the job and agreed to accept no salary. After the war, the U.S. Food Administration became the American Relief Administration, which, at its height, fed 10.5 million people daily. Elected President of the United States in 1928, Hoover took office less than eight months before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 plunged the nation into the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Hoover’s 1932 bid for reelection.
Arthur Brown Ruhl (1876-1935) was born in Rockford, Illinois, and graduated from Harvard University in 1899. While at Harvard, he wrote for The Advocate and Lampoon, and ran on the track team. After he graduated, the New York Evening Sun employed him as a reporter, and he was soon published in Century Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and Collier’s Weekly. He traveled widely and wrote on a wide variety of topics, from sports to theatre to politics. He wrote about Latin-American affairs and was an authority on international relations. He wrote about a Mexican revolution, a volcano erupting in South America, the German and Turkish lines at Gallipoli, the world heavyweight boxing match in Reno, theatres in Moscow, a George Gershwin concert, the Wright Brothers’ experiments with flight, and many other topics. He died in Queens from pneumonia, contracted ten days earlier. He married Zinaida Yakovnchikoff (1904-1952), who was born in Russia and spoke German, in 1926, in Berlin, Germany. They had one son Arthur Paul Ruhl (1929-1997).
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