Hoover realized the challenge was not hunger, as in post-war Europe.
Soviet Russia faced the greatest famine in history.
Feeding 1 million children would only scratch the surface.
He needed to feed adults as well.
That would mean funding from Congress.
Yet he worried Americans would be reluctant to spend their tax
dollars on people whose communist government many saw as monstrous,
and intent on spreading revolution.
We had had a red scare
in our own domestic politics in 1919, 1920.
A general strike in Seattle, a bombing of the home
of the attorney general of the United States.
Never solved.
There were many reasons to fear that leftwing agitation
even of the Communist variety was a serious menace.
Hoover had a reputation
not just as a humanitarian, but also as a staunch anti-Communist.
In postwar central Europe,
he had helped thwart Lenin's attempts to expand communism by threatening
to withhold relief supplies from countries sympathetic to the Bolsheviks.
That worried the American left.
Left of center people, legitimately, I think,
suspected that his motivation here
wasn't pure because he had this kind of revolutionary record
with respect to food relief in Eastern Europe.
To them, a socialist revolution or socialist
regime in Russia was an experiment that should be encouraged.
In Hoover's mind, there was no conflict between feeding people,
giving sort of straightforward humanitarian relief on the one hand
and using food as a political weapon to stop Bolshevism.
Bolshevism was wicked.
It was evil.
Stopping it was humanitarian.
Hoover felt the example of American efficiency
and generosity might do more than just feed the Russians.
That was part of his pitch to President Warren Harding.
He wanted and I think implied
that food famine relief could perhaps lead to a regime change
and that it might get rid of the Bolsheviks.
He thought that by bringing in Americans
with their talents and administrative expertise, their efficiency,
if you will, that they could serve as an example to the Russians.
Lenin was afraid that
he would try to sneak arms in with food and try to organize a resistance.
No, no.
Hoover was not trying to do that at all.
Hoover's primary argument for helping
the Russians was an economic one.
Feeding Russians would help American farmers
who were sitting on huge surpluses.
Hoover asked Congress for $20 million to buy surplus corn
for an expanded relief program for children and for adults.
Some in the House feared it would bolster the Bolshevik government.
With unemployment reaching 5 million during a recession,
some senators favored projects that would create jobs for Americans
or help veterans in distress.
Hoover supporters
and the Farm Belt lobby carried the day.
On December 22nd 1921,
with Harding's backing, Congress approved the purchase of surplus corn.
Hoover also insisted
the Soviets buy wheat seed to plant in the spring
to secure the harvest in 1922.
The ARA campaign in Russia
would be the largest relief operation to date,
and the first to provide
relief to an adversary.
The challenge was to get the food almost halfway around the world
where up to 100,000 Russians were dying every week.