Emeritus Professor Wendy Rosslyn

I am currently researching the famine in Russia in the early 1920s and the international humanitarian aid effort which sent food supplies to some 10,000,000 people. The focus is the work of British and American Quakers, who were based in Samara guberniia and Moscow from 1916 to 1931. They raised large funds from Quakers and the general public, and shipped food and clothing, and then reconstruction supplies, including tractors and hospital equipment. The supplies were distributed personally by a large team of male and female aid workers, including conscientious objectors, socialists, and nurses moving on from war work. They lived alongside the starving people in the ruined villages. The chief sources are the archive of the Friends Emergency and War Victims Committee in London, and the diaries of aid workers. The aid effort is little known in Russia but I am in touch with historians working with the Russian sources.