About this item
An award-winning historian reveals the harrowing, little-known story of an American effort to save the newly formed Soviet Union from disasterAfter decades of the Cold War and renewed tensions, in the wake of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, cooperation between the United States and Russia seems impossible to imagine -- and yet, as Douglas Smith reveals, it has a forgotten but astonishing historical precedent.In 1921, facing one of the worst famines in history, the new Soviet government under Vladimir Lenin invited the American Relief Administration, Herbert Hoover's brainchild, to save communist Russia from ruin. For two years, a small, daring band of Americans fed more than ten million men, women, and children across a million square miles of territory. It was the largest humanitarian operation in history -- preventing the loss of countless lives, social unrest on a massive scale, and, quite possibly, the collapse of the communist state. Now, almost a hundred years later, few in either America or Russia have heard of the ARA. The Soviet government quickly began to erase the memory of American charity. In America, fanatical anti-communism would eclipse this historic cooperation with the Soviet Union. Smith resurrects the American relief mission from obscurity, taking the reader on an unforgettable journey from the heights of human altruism to the depths of human depravity. The story of the ARA is filled with political intrigue, espionage, the clash of ideologies, violence, adventure, and romance, and features some of the great historical figures of the twentieth century. In a time of cynicism and despair about the world's ability to confront international crises, The Russian Job is a riveting account of a cooperative effort unmatched before or since.
About the Author
An award-winning historian and translator, Douglas Smith is the author of five books on Russia. His works have been translated into a dozen languages. He studied German and Russian at the University of Vermont, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and has a doctorate in history from UCLA.
Over the past thirty years Douglas has made many trips to Russia. In the 1980s, he was a Russian-speaking guide on the U.S. State Department's exhibition "Information USA" that traveled throughout the USSR. He has worked as a Soviet affairs analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany, specializing in Russian nationalism, and once served as an interpreter for late President Reagan.
Douglas has taught and lectured widely in the United States, Britain, and Europe and has appeared in documentaries for A&E, National Geographic, and the BBC. He is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including a Fulbright scholarship and a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study Center.
His book Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy was a bestseller in the UK. It won the inaugural Pushkin House Russian Book Prize in 2013, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, and was chosen Book of the Year by Andrew Solomon in Salon.
His latest book, Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs, was published in November 2016. The most complete biography ever written, Rasputin draws on long-lost documents from archives in seven different countries to overturn many of the old myths about the infamous Russian mystic, presenting Rasputin in a fascinating new light. Publishers Weekly calls it "Monumental and soul-shaking ... written with a Dostoevskian flair for noir and obsession." Rasputin has been shortlisted for the 2017 James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the UK.
Born and raised in Minnesota, Douglas has lived in Vienna, London, and Moscow, and is now based in Seattle with his wife and two children.
