The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921

When a devastating famine descended on Bolshevik Russia in 1921, the United States responded with a massive two-year relief mission that battled starvation and disease, and saved millions of lives. The nearly 300 American relief workers were the first outsiders to break through Russia’s isolation, and to witness and record the strange new phenomenon of Russia’s Bolshevism.

This epic tale is related here as a sprawling American adventure story, largely derived from the diaries, memoirs, and ...