“Sovietism’s Effect on Russia's Young”: Anti-Bolshevik Humanitarianism and Russian Refugee Children in 1920s Europe

As historical studies of modern humanitarianism have burgeoned in recent years, the politics of humanitarian action—its ideological origins and motivations, political controversies, and selective sympathies—have become an integral part of scholarly discussion (Barnett 2011; Cabanes 2014). Within this larger conversation, anti-Bolshevism is often acknowledged but more rarely systematically analyzed as one of the factors that shaped post-World War I humanitarianism. Historians have done important work on the anti-Bolshevik dimensions of American and British famine relief in Soviet Russia in 1921–22 (Patenaude 2002; Lowe 2023). However, less attention has been paid to how anti-Bolshevism informed humanitarian efforts aimed at refugee children outside of Russia, another major focus of relief work in the aftermath of the Civil War. This paper explores how childhood became an arena where American humanitarians sought to combat Bolshevism. Drawing on the records of the American Red Cross, American Relief Administration, Committee for the Education of Russian Youth in Exile, and other organizations, and the press coverage, it analyzes the dangers American relief workers and the public associated with the Bolsheviks’ supposed destruction of family, children’s placement under state authority, and communist indoctrination. It suggests that these dangers were understood in civilizational terms, as threatening the entire social and political order in Europe and the US. It also traces how these fears translated into relief and education of refugee children, and explores the role humanitarians envisioned for them in Russia’s reconstruction after the Bolsheviks’ expected downfall. By focusing on the ideological underpinnings of child relief, it aims to highlight the politically charged nature of interwar humanitarianism and deepen our understanding of the early attitudes towards the Bolsheviks’ project in the US.