When famine struck Bolshevik Russia in 1921, the US responded with a two-year relief mission that battled starvation and disease, and saved millions of lives. The tale told here is largely derived from the diaries, memoirs and letters of the American participants.

"Bert Patenaude has written a richly informative and unusually engaging book. In the history of a long-forgotten episode--the American famine relief effort in the new-born Soviet Union in 1921--he has found a template for understanding much of what transpired thereafter in the Soviet-American relationship. And he has done it with brio, marshalling a colorful cast of characters, Soviet as well as American--including especially Herbert Hoover who emerges in a fresh and intriguing light."--David M. Kennedy, author of Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
"This book is to be warmly welcomed as the first full, and admirably presented, account of this major crisis in Soviet history--important, too, as an American experience. Here is not only the dramatic story of the American rescue operation, but also of the astonishing confrontations between the lifesavers and those who resented and sabotaged them."--Robert Conquest, author of The Great Terror and The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine

"This book is to be warmly welcomed as the first full, and admirably presented, account of this major crisis in Soviet history-important, too, as an American experience. Here is not only the dramatic story of the American rescue operation, but also of the astonishing confrontations between the lifesavers and those who resented and sabotaged them."