5 questions with Bert Patenaude on saving lives with food and medicine
Bert Patenaude
Global Health Faculty Fellow Bertrand M. Patenaude, PhD, studies the intersection of war, politics, humanitarian aid, and human health. As a lecturer in history, international relations, and human rights, his courses cover topics such as United Nations peacekeeping, genocide, famine in the modern world, and humanitarian aid.
Patenaude, also a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the award-winning author of numerous books on these topics, including The Big Show in Bololand. This book chronicles the American Relief Administration’s efforts, led by future U.S. President Herbert Hoover, to combat the effects of the devastating famine that descended on Soviet Russia and Ukraine in 1921 by delivering daily food and medicine to millions of citizens in Soviet Russia.
His new book, Bread + Medicine: American Famine Relief in Soviet Russia, 1921–1923, expands on that story by recounting the pivotal role that U.S. doctors and local medical teams played in saving lives by combatting and preventing devastating disease outbreaks during that time. They did this in part through widespread vaccination drives and sanitation efforts, all in conjunction with the provisioning of food. Co-authored by Joan Nabseth Stevenson, the book is a companion publication to the Hoover Institution Library & Archives’ exhibition of the same name and draws extensively from photos and records from the library’s archives.
Dr. Patenaude discussed the lessons this story holds for effective humanitarian aid and the crucial role medical relief plays in saving lives during a famine.
What made this humanitarian effort so successful, and what lessons can we learn from it?
Today, there’s a good deal of criticism about the mistakes made by many NGOs in dealing with humanitarian crises. One author referred to this in the title of a book as The Crisis Caravan, where NGOs come upon the scene of a complex emergency, raise money off it, and then, once the worst is over, move on without having addressed the root causes of the crisis.
There’s no crisis caravan in the story of how the American Relief Administration (ARA) responded to the 1921–23 famine in Soviet Russia. When you look at the long-term difference the ARA was able to make, it’s absolutely amazing.
In studying humanitarian intervention over the years, I have come to see how crucial the medical program was to the success of the American relief mission a century ago. Yes, American food saved many lives, but the medical program was critical to the success of the mission. The essential point is that most people caught up in famine don’t die of outright starvation; they die of diseases caused by hunger and famine-related displacement.
At the same time, the American doctors who arrived in Soviet Russia in 1921 quickly realized that it was pointless to save people with medical treatments only for them to fall victim to starvation—so they made sure to deliver American food to every hospital they were supplying with medicine and medical equipment. Beyond that, Herbert Hoover, the chairman of the ARA, understood that ending the famine would require ensuring the success of the Soviet harvest of 1922. And so, in conjunction with the delivery of life-saving food and medicine, the ARA also organized the delivery of wheat seed from the American Midwest for planting in the Soviet heartland.
Six million people died in the famine. We don’t know how many lives were saved through the gifts of food, medicine, and seed, but I think we can reasonably assume it was many millions.