BENJAMIN D. RHODES
An Ohio Kitchen Inspector and the
Soviet Famine of 1921-1922: The
Russian Odyssey
of Henry C. Wolfe
Persistence paid off for Henry C. Wolfe
of Coshocton, Ohio, when he
sought a job as a relief worker in
Russia during the famine of 1921-1922.
Wolfe eventually was to become
internationally known as a writer and lec-
turer on foreign affairs; one of his
claims to fame was that he predicted (in a
Harper's magazine article) the August 1939 alliance between
Hitler and
Stalin. But in 1921 Wolfe was only
twenty-three years old and was trying to
land his first civilian position abroad,
despite possessing somewhat modest
qualifications. Five years previously he
had completed his high school train-
ing at the Phillips Academy at Andover,
Massachusetts, a school which was
usually referred to as Phillips-Andover
to distinguish it from the Phillips
Exeter Academy at Exeter, New Hampshire.
Wolfe then completed his
freshman year at Kenyon College in
Gambier, Ohio, but his education was
abruptly ended by America's entry into
World War I. Although Wolfe never
returned to complete his degree, the
college's trustees in 1938 awarded him a
consolation prize in the form of an
honorary master's degree. After leaving
Kenyon in the spring of 1917, Wolfe
spent a year and three months as a Red
Cross ambulance driver and attendant in
France. In the final two months of
the war he served, as did Hemingway's
hero in A Farewell to Arms, with an
American ambulance unit on the Italian
front. Returning to his hometown at
the conclusion of the conflict, Wolfe
found employment as a history instruc-
tor in the Coshocton public schools.
Wolfe was tactful enough not to record
his views on teaching history as a
career, but it is apparent that his two years
as a teacher convinced him to seek a new
occupation.1 And in mid-summer
1921 his attention was drawn to a vast
human tragedy which unfolded in
Russia.
Wolfe first became aware of the famine
in Soviet Russia from press reports
describing a mass exodus of starving
refugees from the Volga. The disaster
originated in the confiscation of food
by both Reds and Whites during the
Benjamin D. Rhodes is a Professor of
History at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
1. Employment application of Henry C.
Wolfe, American Relief Administration (ARA) file
of Henry C. Wolfe, ARA Personnel
Records, Box 78, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library,
West Branch, Iowa; New York Times, November
22, 1976.
The Russian Odyssey of Henry C. Wolfe 191 |
|
Civil War, and the final blow was the drought of 1921. Soon the devastation extended from the Urals to Ukraine. A famous appeal by Maxim Gorky (July 13, 1921) called on "all honest European and American people for prompt aid to the Russian people. Give bread and medicine." On behalf of the United States, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, well known as a humanitar- ian, agreed to organize an American aid program in his capacity as chairman of the American Relief Administration (ARA), a private organization with close ties to the United States government. Hoover was a logical choice to head the Russian relief program as he had worked in the Ural region of Russia as an engineer and financier prior to World War I. Following the outbreak of the conflict he had organized the Commission for Relief in Belgium which succeeded brilliantly in saving an entire nation from starvation. His reputa- tion as a humanitarian was enhanced further by his role as chairman of the ARA at the Paris Peace Conference. Within a few weeks of Gorky's appeal the ARA's European director, Walter L. Brown, was able to sign an agree- ment (August 20, 1921) with the Soviets permitting the ARA to operate throughout Russia in a nonpolitical fashion. To lead the operation Hoover |
192 OHIO
HISTORY
selected Colonel William N. Haskell, a
graduate of West Point (class of
1901) who had efficiently supervised ARA
relief in Rumania and Armenia.2
Perceiving that Haskell would need
American personnel to supervise the dis-
tribution of relief supplies, Henry C.
Wolfe swung into action.
His first step was to solicit glowing
letters of recommendation from Ohio
Senator Frank B. Willis, Representative
William Morgan, a county judge,
and a local businessman ("Mr.
Wolfe," noted Thomas G. Brown of
Coshocton, "is a man of fine
ability, high character, and with an abundance of
energy and snap."). These were then
forwarded to ARA headquarters at New
York together with Wolfe's application
for employment. Shrewdly Wolfe
followed up his application with a
series of letters to Perrin C. Galpin, the
Secretary of the ARA. Galpin, a close
friend of Frederick Daly, the football
coach at Phillips-Andover, was unable to
offer immediate encouragement as
the ARA had sufficient personnel for the
time being. Wolfe's prospects sud-
denly improved in December, however,
when Congress approved an appropri-
ation of $20 million to be used for
Russian relief. Alertly Wolfe renewed his
inquiries, writing Galpin: "It has
occurred to me that possibly you might
need couriers or workers in other
capacities than you have used so far. In that
event please keep me in mind for I am
very eager to enter your service. I
shall be 24 on Jan 11th by the
way."3
This time Wolfe's tenacity produced
results. "If you [are] still available and
anxious [to] go overseas for hard work
can accept you," Galpin telegraphed.
Wolfe's departure for London was
scheduled for January 7, 1922, on the
Finland, and he was to share a cabin with two other young
Americans. He
was given only ten days to get his
affairs in order, and to purchase such win-
ter gear as heavy underwear, galoshes,
and a sleeping bag. Although his em-
ployment was to last only for the
duration of the famine relief operation, the
pay was at the attractive rate of $200 a
month, plus a $6 a day subsistence al-
lowance with all travel costs included.4
Thus, through a combination of per-
2. Maxim Gorky's appeal to the American
people, July 13, 1921, in Documents of the
American Relief Administration,
Russian Operations, 1921-1923, ed. H.
H. Fisher and Suda L.
Bane, 11 vols. (Stanford, 1931), 1, 1-2.
For the background of the ARA's Russian operations
see H. H. Fisher, The Famine in
Soviet Russia, 1919-1923 (New York, 1927), Frank A. Golder
and Lincoln Hutchinson, On the Trail
of the Russian Famine (Stanford, 1927), P. C. Hiebert and
Orie O. Miller, Feeding the Hungry:
The Russian Famine 1919-1925 (Scottdale, Penn., 1929),
and Benjamin M. Weissman, Herbert
Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia, 1921-1923
(Stanford, 1974). For a definitive
account of Hoover's early career see George H. Nash, The
Life of Herbert Hoover: The Engineer,
1874-1914 (New York, 1983), and The
Life of Herbert
Hoover: The Humanitarian, 1914-1917 (New York, 1988).
3. Willis to Hoover, August 17, 1921;
Morgan to Hoover, August 17, 1921; Judge James
Glenn to Willis, August 15, 1921; Brown
to Willis, August 15, 1921; Wolfe to Galpin, October
8, 1921; Galpin to Wolfe, October 11,
1921; Wolfe to Galpin, December 29, 1921, all in Wolfe
personnel file, Hoover Library.
4. Galpin to Wolfe, December 29, 1921;
ARA "Individual Record Sheet" of Henry C.
Wolfe, January 5, 1922, both in Wolfe
personnel file, Hoover Library.
The Russian Odyssey of Henry C.
Wolfe 193
sistence and the judicious use of
political pull, Wolfe embarked upon a ven-
ture that promised a tour of the exotic
but barren land of the Bolsheviks, to-
gether with an opportunity to perform a
humanitarian service. He was well
aware that long hours were part of the
bargain, but he may not have appreci-
ated that ARA work in Russia carried
with it some real dangers from brigands
and from such contagious diseases as
typhus. The hazards of service in
Russia were soon brought home to Wolfe
when one of his cabin mates,
Philip Sheild, mysteriously disappeared
at Simbirsk without a trace, the ap-
parent victim of robbers.5
In common with the majority of the
fellow ARA workers, the twenty-four-
year-old Wolfe was no expert about the
history, geography, or language of
Russia. Another of his limitations as an
observer was that he was not inured
to scenes of extreme hardship. Naturally
shocked by the contrast between the
bounty of Ohio and the desolation of the
Volga region, he may have exagger-
ated the smells and sights he witnessed.
As late as 1959, in an article of rem-
iniscences published at the height of
the Cold War, Wolfe stressed sensational
aspects of his experience and implied
that the Communist leadership had been
shockingly ungrateful for the aid
distributed by the ARA. For Wolfe person-
ally the most lasting result of his trip
to Russia was that it left him with a
deep distaste for Communism, although he
remembered the courage and gen-
uine gratitude of the long-suffering
Russian people.
Galpin had not exaggerated when he told
Wolfe to prepare himself for hard
physical work and the discomforts of a
primitive society. The Ohioan's
Russian adventure began with his
departure from Coshocton on January 5.
Two days later he was sailing across the
Atlantic to London. His route then
took him by train across Germany to
Riga, Latvia, where he entered a strange
and unfamiliar world. The Moscow-Riga
"express" was cold, dingy, lacking
in sleeping cars, and pulled at a
snail's pace by a wood-burning locomotive
through a dark and snowy landscape. The
sight of miserable, evil-smelling
refugees at the Moscow station appalled
Wolfe who recalled, "I was totally
unprepared for this ghastly preview of
the Russian famine." At the ARA
headquarters, known as the "Pink
House" because of its color, he learned his
destination was to be the city of Samara
on the Volga. A final two days on a
"dilapidated, vermin-infested"
train completed his twenty-four day journey
from Ohio.
Wolfe's arrival at Samara (January 31,
1922) coincided with the depths of
the famine. He found it an unnerving
experience to count fourteen corpses
abandoned in the vicinity of ARA
headquarters.6 Contrary to his initial im-
5. Fisher, Famine in Soviet Russia, 228-30.
6. Henry C. Wolfe, "The Year We
Saved the Russians," This Week Magazine, February
15, 1959; "Coshocton Man Describes
Famine Scenes Among Russians," Coshocton, Ohio,
194 OHIO HISTORY
pression, the general population of the
cities was not desperately short of
food. The most profound impact was
experienced by rural areas, where the
destitute abandoned their homes and
sometimes their children as they fled to
some location where food was rumored to
be available. Packed together in,
on top of, and between freight cars, the
refugees frequently contracted typhus
spread by lice. Most of the corpses
viewed by Wolfe on his arrival-includ-
ing one being gnawed by dogs-were
probably those of nomadic refugees.
For four weeks Wolfe underwent an
intensive on-the-job training course
under the tutelage of District
Supervisor Will Shafroth. A twenty-nine-year-
old native of Denver, Shafroth was the
son of a former Democratic governor
and senator from Colorado. Shafroth had
graduated from the University of
Michigan and received his law degree
from the University of California at
Berkeley. More importantly, Shafroth had
served with the ARA in Poland
from November, 1920 to August, 1921 as a
"babyfeeder" (ARA slang for
employees engaged in children's relief).
Colonel Haskell then selected
Shafroth as a member of the first party
to enter Russia and he organized the
relief operation at Samara. According to
a notation in his personnel file,
Shafroth served the ARA "in a most
commendable manner."7 In accordance
with the ARA's rule "feed them
first," the first priority was establishing
kitchens for feeding starving children.
The distribution of rations to hungry
adults had to await the arrival of
shiploads of bulk corn which were en route
to the Black Sea ports of Novorossisk,
Odessa, and Theodosia.
On his arrival Wolfe went to work learning
the ARA's system of opera-
tion. One of his first jobs was to
undertake an inventory of food remittance
packages which had been purchased by
Americans for delivery to their friends
and relatives in Russia. On average,
Wolfe found that something was miss-
ing from every third package, either as
the result of carelessness or theft.
Moreover, Wolfe learned the procedures
whereby the ARA established and
administered child-feeding kitchens. The
guiding principle was that each
child, once certified by a local
committee as hungry, was issued a card permit-
ting a daily meal of corn bread, rice,
and cocoa. The children were not al-
lowed to take food from the premises, on
the assumption it might be sold or
distributed to so many family members as
to do no real good. Possibly as a
result of eating at an ARA kitchen,
Wolfe was stricken with a digestive ill-
ness diagnosed by Dr. Frederick Foucar
as "entero-colitis, acute catarrhal."
But Wolfe's situation could have been
far worse since both cholera and typhus
were prevalent in the region. Within a
few days Wolfe was back on his feet
Tribune and Times-Age, July 3, 1922, in Henry C. Wolfe Papers, Box 1, Archives
of the
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution
and Peace, Stanford University.
7. ARA personnel file of Will Shafroth,
ARA Personnel Records, Box 65, Hoover
Presidential Library.
The Russian Odyssey of Henry C.
Wolfe 195
and able to travel to his new assignment
of kitchen inspector at Melekes,
sixty miles to the north.8
The three-day trip by sleigh through a
snow-covered forest was a dramatic
experience in itself. Wolfe carried a
revolver he had borrowed from the Cheka
(the secret police) for protection from
brigands, and his two drivers and the in-
terpreter carried axes in case they were
attacked by wolves. Another hazard
was the extreme cold. Coming across the
frozen body of a driver, the party
resolved to walk every mile or so to
keep warm. Along the way Wolfe vis-
ited kitchens maintained by the ARA and
interviewed, through his interpreter,
the committees which were in charge of
the food preparation. All the
kitchens were in good sanitary condition
except "No. 2" at Novy Booyan
"which smelled very bad." The
problem, concluded Wolfe, was that "the
owner of the home was living in the
dining room and I ordered them to get
him out to let some fresh air in once in
a while." Visiting kitchen "No. 21"
at Eremkino, Wolfe was told by members
of the kitchen committee that no
cats or dogs were left in the town as
all had been eaten. The number of cows
was said to have declined from 800 in
September to only 180, and they re-
ported that each day eight to ten adults
died. No children had died since the es-
tablishment of the ARA kitchen, Wolfe
was told, and as a result: "The
committee said that people come to the
kitchen and worship America as they
do at church."9
An overnight stop was made at the
village of Kuroyedova where Wolfe was
housed in the home of the local priest.
To his surprise, Wolfe was told by
his interpreter, "The priest says
there's a lovely lady in the next room to
where you are." On investigating,
Wolfe found that "the lovely lady" was ac-
tually a cow which was being kept in the
house for protection from hungry
neighbors.10 In this village
the ARA had no kitchen, but Wolfe, on instruc-
tions from Shafroth, visited a
government kitchen operated by Ukrainians.
He found both the sanitation and the
quality of the food to be "very bad" and
observed the serving of "a fish
soup which only people in a very bad condi-
tion could swallow and which had the
appearance of the paste used to stick up
show bills back in the States."
Wolfe was spared the ordeal of the fish soup
as he was served lunch at the home of
one of the committee members. Before
the meal was finished, Wolfe was visited
by a committee of women "who
cried and told me through my interpreter
that without American aid everyone
would die before summer." Next to
appear was a committee of elderly men
8. Shafroth to Haskell, February 23,
1922, Box 194, Records of the American Relief
Administration, Russian Operations (ARA
Records), Archives of the Hoover Institution; Foucar
to Dr. Henry Beeuwkes, February 22,
1922, Box 197, ARA Records, Hoover Institution.
9. Wolfe, "Coshocton Man Describes
Famine Scenes," Box 1, Wolfe Papers, Hoover
Institution; Wolfe to Shafroth, March
11, 1922, Box 93, ARA Records, Hoover Institution.
10. Oral history interview with Henry C.
Wolfe, October 17, 1969, Hoover Presidential
Library.
196 OHIO HISTORY
who forced their way into the room where
they fell on their knees, crossed
themselves, and bowed so that their
foreheads touched the floor. The inter-
preter explained that Wolfe had become
practically an object of idolatry:
"They wanted to worship the
representative of the ARA which they look
upon as all powerful and the only thing
that can save them." To both groups
Wolfe tactfully gave assurances that he
would do all in his power to assist
them. 11
In common with his ARA co-workers, Wolfe
was particularly fascinated by
the numerous reports he received of
cannibalism "all along the line." Most of
the accounts compiled by ARA workers
about the delicate topic of the con-
sumption of human flesh were based on
second or third-hand reports or taken
from newspapers. Wolfe, however, was
shown severed limbs confiscated
from a cannibal "who had been
caught eating his boy a short time ago." In a
similar case at Eremkino, Wolfe was told
that "a father ate his two small
children of six and eight years of
age." Wolfe was not able personally to in-
vestigate the case, but from members of
the local famine committee he
learned that the man had repeatedly come
to the ARA kitchen asking for food
for his "sick" children. When
confronted by suspicious members of the
committee, Wolfe reported, "the
father broke down and confessed he had killed
and eaten them. The committee said he
told them that the children's flesh
tasted sweeter than pork." The
accuracy of the account was based solely on
the statements of the committee members,
but Wolfe found their sense of
horror to be convincing evidence of the
gravity of the situation in the
Melekes region.12
Melekes' starving time continued
unabated well into April. According to
Shafroth's estimate of April 12, the
situation in Samara province was worse
than in any preceding month and hunger
was increasing everywhere. The
spring thaw added to the misery by
making the roads impassible and delaying
the distribution of relief supplies. A
further concern was that epidemics
might occur due to the presence of
numerous unburied corpses stored during
the winter. As Shafroth noted, "In
many places the dead bodies are piled in a
warehouse of some kind in the middle of
the village, and with the com-
mencement of warm weather they begin to
rot and putrefy."13
Throughout his distressing journey to
Melekes, Wolfe was sustained by the
knowledge that American bulk corn and
seed grain were in the process of be-
ing shipped across the Atlantic to
Russia's Black Sea ports. Novorossisk,
the entry port for shipping corn to the
Volga region, was visited by fifteen
American freighters between February and
May, 1922. From the ARA point
of view, the distribution of the corn
proceeded at a painfully slow pace. The
11. Wolfe to Shafroth, April 12, 1922,
Box 93, ARA Records, Hoover Institution.
12. Ibid.
13. Shafroth to Haskell, April 12, 1922,
Box 93, ARA Records, Hoover Institution.
The Russian Odyssey of Henry C.
Wolfe 197
problem was not a lack of cooperation or
manpower, but the decrepit condi-
tion of the docking facilities,
warehouses, and railroads. Despite the frustra-
tions, the first corn train arrived in
Samara during the first week of April.14
Back in Melekes, Wolfe and his Russian
employees were in the final stage
of readiness to receive and distribute
the corn. Although he was later a severe
critic of Communism, Wolfe at the time
praised the local Communist offi-
cials for their helpful suggestions
which speeded his work. To Wolfe one of
the most surprising aspects, considering
the gravity of the situation, was the
universal cooperation displayed by all
the participants, from government offi-
cials to the humblest peasant.
"Although each hour was precious," noted
Wolfe, "there was perfect order and
no disputes about who was to receive his
corn first." Without exception the
hungry people who swarmed into Melekes
accepted Wolfe's decision to feed the
worst villages first. And, when the first
corn train arrived at the Melekes
station (April 22), Wolfe caught the
poignancy of the moment as he recorded
the prevalent mood of eager coopera-
tion, discipline, and emotional, genuine
gratitude to America.
As promised, the mill began
round-the-clock operations the same day the
corn arrived. The resulting corn flour
was consistently of fine quality and
when village committees were given the
choice of receiving corn or flour, in
every case they chose the latter. As the
loading of wagons commenced,
Wolfe, as inconspicuously as possible,
observed the process: "When a sack
of the precious flour was brought out of
the mill it was eagerly seized by half
a dozen volunteers who carefully carried
it to the wagon, handling it with the
greatest caution and much as a mother
handles a baby. The utmost care was
taken that the sacks had no holes in
them. No miser ever guarded his gold
with more care than these famished
peasants watched over their flour."
One of Wolfe's worries was that a lack
of horses would delay the corn dis-
tribution. Many villages, he knew, had
eaten all their horses during the win-
ter. But his apprehensions proved
unjustified as in three nearby villages
without horses, every person not too
weak to walk hiked to Melekes. Wolfe
quietly watched as the half-starved
inhabitants of Yakooshki shouldered bags
of corn flour-heavy loads being assigned
to adult men and lighter loads to
the women and children. To Wolfe's
surprise the group returned later in the
day for a second load. Thus they managed
to transport the village's entire corn
allotment in a single day, covering a
total distance of twenty miles. Wolfe
admiringly recorded: "They are
subnormal physically and for people in their
condition this accomplishment can only
be described as wonderful."
Wolfe felt he could not leave Melekes
while the distribution was in process
and so did not personally witness the
arrival of the precious American corn
flour in the villages. But the next day
(April 23), he was visited by the
14. J. H. Lange to Haskell, May 18,
1922, Box 174, ARA Records, Hoover Institution;
Fisher, Famine in Soviet Russia, 166-72.
198 OHIO HISTORY
chairman of Novo Maina who described in
the greatest detail the scene as the
ARA corn flour came into view:
When the wagons came in sight of the
village all the people able to walk went
out to meet them. People so weak from
hunger that they could not walk dragged
themselves after the others. The people
knelt on the ground crossing themselves
and thanking God and America for this
delivery from the grave. Many of the peo-
ple were crying, he said.
The best part of the description was
when the chairman described the delicious
bread made from corn. It was most
interesting to see this man's face as he told of
the joy and gratitude of the people of
his village and the volost in general of
which he is the responsible manager.
Before he left he asked me for a piece of pa-
per on which he wrote the following
poem:
Translation of Poem
"TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE,
Great Land, Great People,
Greetings to you from the edge of the
grave,
Only in you we found our Saviour,
And at the edge of the grave you saved
us!"
R.V.D.
This poem is excellent proof of the
gratitude of the people in this region.15
In his final six months at Melekes,
Wolfe kept active inspecting child-feed-
ing kitchens and distributing adult
rations and food remittance packages sent
from America. By July he had sufficient
free time available to request that
the ARA's Moscow office send him a
Remington typewriter together with a
touch-typing instruction book; assuming
the typewriter was to be used for
personal letters, Colonel Haskell
deducted its cost from Wolfe's account.
Wolfe spent much of August touring his
district inspecting kitchens and
noted a continued improvement in food
conditions as a result of flourishing
local vegetable gardens. He was certain
a good harvest was in prospect, de-
spite some damage caused by locusts.
However, Wolfe predicted that by
January 1 the poorer residents would
again run short of food, but he believed
"there will be a great improvement
over the conditions of last winter."16 The
modest progress reported throughout the
famine districts convinced the direc-
tors of the ARA in New York that they
could not continue to feed Russia in-
definitely. On the recommendation of
Hoover and Haskell, the directors con-
cluded that adult feeding should be
ended with the new harvest on September 1
and that child-feeding should be carried
on for another year through existing
institutions such as schools and
orphanages. The phasing out of the famine
15. Wolfe, "Arrival of the First
Corn in Melekes, Samara," April 22, 1922, Wolfe Papers,
Box 1, Hoover Institution.
16. Haskell to Ronald Allen, June 26,
1922, Box 197, ARA Records, Hoover Institution;
Wolfe to Haskell, August 11, 1922, Box
94, ARA Records, Hoover Institution.
The Russian Odyssey of Henry C.
Wolfe 199
relief operation meant that fewer ARA
employees were needed. Thus Wolfe
and many of his colleagues had
effectively worked themselves out of a job.17
Wolfe's adventure at Melekes ended on
November 22 when he departed for
the more amenable climate of Greece. But
his visit to the Mediterranean was
not a vacation. By the first of the year
an estimated 1.2 million destitute
refugees had fled to Greece following a
successful Turkish counteroffensive in
the Turkish-Greek conflict of 1921-1923.
At the request of the Red Cross,
the ARA agreed to "loan"
Colonel Haskell to lead a nine-man mission to
Greece to organize relief operations.
Arriving in Greece two weeks after his
twenty-fifth birthday, Wolfe must have
been flattered to discover that he was
the junior member of the group, which
was composed primarily of physicians
and army officers. For a year he worked
in the Patras region before returning
to New York where he joined the Near
East Relief Committee, an organiza-
tion which furnished assistance to
Armenian and Christian refugees from
Turkey. Arthur T. Daily, the ARA's
assistant secretary, composed a glowing
letter of recommendation, which
concluded with the words: "Mr. Wolfe's
work with us in Russia was of such a
satisfactory nature that he was later
chosen by Colonel Haskell to join the
Red Cross Mission to Greece. We
have a very high opinion of Mr. Wolfe and
are glad indeed to recommend him
to you."18
For Wolfe his ten months in Soviet
Russia had been a strange blend of hor-
ror and humanitarianism. At Melekes
Wolfe saw scenes he could never for-
get, including cannibalism, parents
abandoning their children, and "people eat-
ing horse manure and other horrible
stuff." At the same time he was intensely
proud of having belonged to an
idealistic organization whose efforts had
changed Melekes from "a land of
sadness and death" to "a place of life and
happiness."19 Had Wolfe,
who died in 1976, lived another fifteen years he
would surely have felt vindicated and
elated by the collapse of a system he
considered to be unjust, brutal, and
inefficient. His ten months in Russia had
left him with nothing but admiration for
the indomitable Russian people, and
with nothing but loathing for a callous
Soviet regime which, in his view, had
done little to prevent or alleviate the
famine.
17. Fisher, Famine in Soviet Russia, 297-307.
18. New York Times, January 5,
1923; George I. Gay (ARA London headquarters) to
ARA, New York, December 12, 1922, and
Arthur T. Dailey to Barclay Acheson, October 2,
1923, both in Wolfe personnel file,
Hoover Library.
19. Wolfe, "Arrival of the First
Corn in Melekes, Samara," April 22, 1922, Wolfe Papers,
Box 1, Hoover Institution.
BENJAMIN D. RHODES
An Ohio Kitchen Inspector and the
Soviet Famine of 1921-1922: The
Russian Odyssey
of Henry C. Wolfe
Persistence paid off for Henry C. Wolfe
of Coshocton, Ohio, when he
sought a job as a relief worker in
Russia during the famine of 1921-1922.
Wolfe eventually was to become
internationally known as a writer and lec-
turer on foreign affairs; one of his
claims to fame was that he predicted (in a
Harper's magazine article) the August 1939 alliance between
Hitler and
Stalin. But in 1921 Wolfe was only
twenty-three years old and was trying to
land his first civilian position abroad,
despite possessing somewhat modest
qualifications. Five years previously he
had completed his high school train-
ing at the Phillips Academy at Andover,
Massachusetts, a school which was
usually referred to as Phillips-Andover
to distinguish it from the Phillips
Exeter Academy at Exeter, New Hampshire.
Wolfe then completed his
freshman year at Kenyon College in
Gambier, Ohio, but his education was
abruptly ended by America's entry into
World War I. Although Wolfe never
returned to complete his degree, the
college's trustees in 1938 awarded him a
consolation prize in the form of an
honorary master's degree. After leaving
Kenyon in the spring of 1917, Wolfe
spent a year and three months as a Red
Cross ambulance driver and attendant in
France. In the final two months of
the war he served, as did Hemingway's
hero in A Farewell to Arms, with an
American ambulance unit on the Italian
front. Returning to his hometown at
the conclusion of the conflict, Wolfe
found employment as a history instruc-
tor in the Coshocton public schools.
Wolfe was tactful enough not to record
his views on teaching history as a
career, but it is apparent that his two years
as a teacher convinced him to seek a new
occupation.1 And in mid-summer
1921 his attention was drawn to a vast
human tragedy which unfolded in
Russia.
Wolfe first became aware of the famine
in Soviet Russia from press reports
describing a mass exodus of starving
refugees from the Volga. The disaster
originated in the confiscation of food
by both Reds and Whites during the
Benjamin D. Rhodes is a Professor of
History at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
1. Employment application of Henry C.
Wolfe, American Relief Administration (ARA) file
of Henry C. Wolfe, ARA Personnel
Records, Box 78, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library,
West Branch, Iowa; New York Times, November
22, 1976.