World Radio

In a fascinating new book, The Big Show in Bololand, Bertrand Patenude tells the story of the 1921 famine in Soviet Russia, that would eventually claim somewhere close to 5 million lives. The world was alerted to the crisis by a letter by Maxim Gorky in The New York Times in which he appealed – “To All Honest People……..Gloomy days have come to the country of Tolstoy, Dostovesky, Mendeleev, Pavlov, Mussorgsky, Glinka ……I ask all honest European and American people for prompt aid to the Russian people. Give bread and medicine. " Remarkably, it was the arch-conservative Republican US President, Herbert Hoover who answered the call and so saved Lenin's fledgling Bolshevik state.