The American Volga Relief Society was a German American non-governmental organization that provided relief and supplies to ethnically German settlements in the area around the Volga River. The group was active following World War I, during the period between 1921 and 1924. The organization officially disbanded in 1926, though private donations continued until the 1930s.
Historical context
Following the Russian Revolution and subsequent Bolshevik seizure of the government in 1917, Vladimir Lenin became the de facto leader of the newly formed Soviet Union. One of the first acts of the Lenin government was to confiscate and redistribute peasant lands in order to institute a system of collective farming. In the Volga region, farmers were required to relinquish their seed wheat, preventing them from planting wheat for the following year and effectively destroying the potential harvest. The Saratov and Samara provinces, along the Volga River, saw ethnic Germans resisting the seizure of peasant land and seed wheat. The Lenin government responded by ordering complete grain requisition and an extermination campaign. Along with this, crops failed due a drought, and by 1921, the region was being devastated by famine, starvation, and war.
This part of the country, along with the Ukraine, was one of the largest grain-producing regions, and the loss of both labor power and collective farms would have been a blow to the new Bolshevik government. For fear of an increased number of rebellions, the Bolshevik government requested international famine relief organizations into the area, despite several years of denying a crisis. Many of the American relief efforts were coordinated under Herbert Hoover's American Relief Administration, which coordinated and oversaw non-governmental relief operations. The privately funded AVRS was a part of this organizational relief campaign of the United States federal government.
The famine
The Russian famine of 1921-1922 generated an enormous amount of media coverage in the United States, and public support for the victims of the famine was high. Reports of conditions from family members and journalists in the Volga region pointed suggested a bleak picture with an emphasis on the sensational, particularly as regards the deaths of children and the rumors of cannibalism among people living in remote areas of the Soviet Union.
The Russian famine also generated a number of diseases, including typhus, that further decimated the population. In total, estimates suggest approximately five million people perished all over Russia during the famine.
German Russians in the Volga region
Specifically in the Volga, the Volga Germans living in the region numbered close to 750,000 people in 1914; by 1920, that number had dwindled to about 450,000 in a combination of death and flight. When the famine hit, the years 1921-1922 had the highest death toll, with approximately 170,000 deaths German settlements along the Volga River.
After the Revolution and the end of the famine, the German population became one of the largest ethnic minority groups in Russia. In 1924, the Soviet government granted the German Russians a degree of autonomy as the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Ethnic Germans had migrated to this region under Catherine the Great, and were allowed to maintain cultural traditions such as religious practices and clothing. During the famine, however, many of these ethnic Germans fled to the United States, Canada, England, and other Western states, seeking refuge from the risk of starvation. Others left for the cities and other towns of Russia and Europe, hoping to escape the devastation. Many of these expatriates left family behind in Russia, although many of them continued to have contact with their relatives and friends who remained in the Volga region.
Formation of the AVRS
The flight of German Russians to the United States resulted in a large German American population. Beginning in 1920, following the First World War, many German Americans received letters from family members still living near the Volga. Upper and middle class Americans considered the possibilities of aiding the Russians fleeing the number regime. Relief efforts began to crop up, and efforts to send aid to various regions of Russia dealing with famine or starvation, particularly from churches and other religious organizations.