Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avregan.

This day, August 21st, 1921, the largest relief effort in the world up to that point is mounted.

After 10 days of negotiation to plan the effort in early September, late summer, dozens of American ships start

arriving in Russian ports, carrying 700 tons of food, mostly corn, which was then used to feed

children in cities throughout Russia.

This program was starting now. It would run for a while. By the next summer,

summer of 1922, the American Food Program had fanned out across Russia was feeding some 11 million Russians a day.

This food program was largely the work of Herbert Hoover, who in the time since the end of World War I had made food assistance one of his major priorities.

He saw it both as a noble humanitarian effort but also a political cudgel.

Food will win the war was his slogan. So let's talk about the US-Russia food aid nexus and also this really interesting part of Hoover's career that I didn't really know too much about it. I don't think I really

thought of him as a food guy. Do we come a foodie as a result of this? I don't know.

But here to do that as always are, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly

Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.

Hello Jody. Hey there. Do we want to start kind of bigger picture with like Hoover

and his role in food aid particularly coming out of World War I, it really was quite a remarkable effort.

Hoover really was known in this era as a kind of if not philanthropist than like a man who was out there

healing the world in some ways that he was bringing food

to war-torn places, places like Belgium, making sure that Americans economized

so that there would be food available

to help out US allies during World War I to make sure that people who didn't have

enough had enough, which was really his legacy going into the 1920s.

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