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LUKE KELLY
British
Humanitarian
Activity in
Russia,
1890–1923
British Humanitarian Activity in Russia, 1890–1923
Luke Kelly
British Humanitarian
Activity in Russia,
1890–1923
Luke Kelly
University of Manchester
Manchester, UK
Conclusion 213
Index 217
v
Abbreviations
vii
List of Figures
ix
x List of Figures
Fig. 6 (a) Contributions for the Russian field, excluding gifts in kind,
by week, 26 November 1921–6 October 1923 (£).
(b) Income for the Russian field, excluding gifts in kind,
by month, 26 November 1921–6 October 1923 (£) 196
Fig. 7 FWVRC: Contributions by source, September 1921–March
1924 (£) 199
Fig. 8 FWVRC: Contributions by source, September 1921–March
1924 200
British Humanitarian Activity
and Russia, c. 1890–1923
[The famine has the effect of] illustrating in a very striking way the rotten-
ness of the whole system of government… Everywhere extravagance meets
the eye, the forests have been cut down wantonly, the rivers are neglected,
the climate is ruined, the peasant, who pays on the average taxes to the
tune of four pounds per head, is simply regarded as a revenue-producing
unit.1
Manchester Guardian (on the 1891 famine)
In 1891 news reached Britain that the crops had failed in the Volga
region of Russia. Soon after, appeals were printed in British newspa-
pers, avowing that ‘every £1 given will probably save a life’, and a fund
of about £37,262 15s 2d (or £49,640,000 in 2015 money) was sent to
the famine region.3 This relatively familiar (both then and now) occur-
rence is the starting point of the analysis presented in this book. Familiar
because famines in British India at the same time attracted donations
equivalent to hundreds of millions of pounds in today’s money, and fam-
ines elsewhere would continue to attract the interest of British donors
throughout the twentieth century. By the 1890s, giving aid for distant
strangers had become an established part of British life. Russia, now
more visible in the British imagination, became the object of interven-
tions as British churches, journalists and politicians, among others, pre-
sented an assortment of humanitarian prescriptions to a country seen to
be struggling. The Society of Friends (Quakers) offered famine relief in
1891–1892, 1907 famine and 1921–1923, war relief from 1916, as well
as providing support to the persecuted Doukhobor sect after 1897. The
Society of Friends of Russian Freedom (SFRF) was a pressure group set
up in 1890 by Russian exiles and British liberals specifically to reform
Russia’s government by generating public outrage through its jour-
nal Free Russia. Russia’s persecution of Jews prompted condemnation
throughout the period. Many groups, including the newly formed Save
the Children Fund, sent money and workers to help in the 1921–1923
famine as part of an internationalised effort.
In one sense, the interest in Russia clearly echoed earlier and later
humanitarian campaigns in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Similar
networks of liberals and Christians had been involved in the main
humanitarian causes earlier in the century: abolition, aborigines’ protec-
tion, Jewish relief.4 Many of the actors supported the institutionalisation
of humanitarianism, through their presence at peace conferences, inter-
est in international institutions, and standardisation of relief practices.5
But apart from these broad tendencies, the aims of these actors varied, as
did their methods. Russia was just one country among many, itself mani-
festing multiple problems, only some of which were addressed: political
oppression and censorship, religious oppression, anti-Jewish pogroms
Historiography
Humanitarianism, broadly understood as ranging from Enlightenment
schemes for the improvement of prisons, schools and public health, to
warzone interventions by non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
like Médecins sans frontières,7 has generated a great deal of scholarship
in recent years. First, cultural histories of humanitarian sentiments, par-
ticularly in the eighteenth century, have formed an important strand of
the historiography.8 This approach has led to a great deal of work on
responses to, and representations of, humanitarian suffering.9 Secondly,
humanitarian practices, or practices like medicine that can be turned to
humanitarian ends, are also important aspects of humanitarian action.
Analysis of missionaries’ work to convert, as well as to clothe, educate and
heal, non-Christian subjects of European empires, is clearly an important
component of humanitarian history, as is later medical work. Historians
and anthropologists have shown how paternalism, professional norms,
and state and economic power have combined to produce outcomes more
ambiguous and varied than simply the relief of suffering.10 Thirdly, the
6 Peter Redfield, ‘Doctors, Borders and Life in Crisis,’ Cultural Anthropology, 20:3
Cultural History, ed. by Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp.
176–204; Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History, 1st edn (New York: W.W.
Norton & Co., 2007); Karen Halttunen, ‘Humanitarianism and the Pornography of Pain
in Anglo-American Culture’, American Historical Review, 100.2 (2005), pp. 303–334.
9 Richard Wilson and Richard D. Brown, Humanitarianism and Suffering: The
11 Thomas L. Haskell, ‘Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part
1’, American Historical Review, 90.2 (1985), p. 339; Thomas L. Haskell, ‘Capitalism and
the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part 2’, American Historical Review, 90.3
(1985), p. 547; Michael N. Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011); Antonio Donini, ‘The Far Side: The
Meta Functions of Humanitarianism in a Globalised World’, Disasters, 34.S2 (2010),
S220–S237.
12 Barnett, p. 30.
Discerning this ethic is only one part of the equation. By contrast, Didier
Fassin’s Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present uses eth-
nography to produce very precise and nuanced analyses of ‘humani-
tarian reason’ in bureaucratic processes, medical work, disaster relief,
and other such situations. This has the advantage of greater preci-
sion and provides some of the most interesting case studies in the field.
Nevertheless, such ethnographies, however illuminating in the present,
can seem disconnected from longer timelines and deeper structures of
power. Humanitarianism emerges as an extremely malleable, yet perva-
sive, force.14 The problem of linking ‘humanitarianism’ with its diverse
manifestations remains. One solution is Laqua’s ‘metaphor of a “human-
itarian cloud”. Similar to a cloud, the contours of humanitarianism are
often unclear: at times, it is difficult to delineate humanitarian concerns
from Christian charity, or from political expressions of solidarity’, which
can obscure differing motivations and effects. But the cloud also contains
‘pooled resources…be they rhetorical tropes, specific types of informa-
tion or campaigning techniques.’15 Such a perspective allows us to show
the divergences between the actors involved in humanitarian acts but
also the common thread of relief or campaigning techniques and at least
some underlying ideals.
Perhaps the narrative of the longest duration and greatest analytic
coherence is that of humanitarian principles in international rela-
tions. This historiography shows to what degree humanitarian norms,
broadly understood, have been able to override state sovereignty and
national aims.16 For example, interventions in the Ottoman Empire,
14 Didier Fassin and Rachel Gomme, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the
and Strangers’, Journal of Modern European History, 12.2 (2014), pp. 175–185 (p. 184).
16 Brendan Simms and D.J.B. Trim, ‘Humanitarian Intervention: A History’
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Alex J. Bellamy, Massacres and Morality:
Mass Atrocities in an Age of Civilian Immunity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012);
Fabian Klose, The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas and Practice from the
Nineteenth Century to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
BRITISH HUMANITARIAN ACTIVITY AND RUSSIA, C. 1890–1923 7
Romania and other new East European states have been looked at.17
Humanitarian responses to Russia have received comparatively little
attention, mainly because the country, one of the strongest in Europe,
was not nearly as susceptible to intervention as its southern neighbours.
Indeed, historiography on foreign responses to Russia focus on inter-
national relations, from the Great Game to the alliance system lead-
ing up to the First World War, and then responses to communism.18
Various sub-national connections in the fields of labour history, art and
culture, scholarship, and so on, have also been considered, but gener-
ally within distinct disciplinary boundaries.19 Humanitarianism was
indeed only a minor strand of the Anglo-Russian relationship (although
it took on greater prominence during certain flashpoints like the 1921
famine). Keith Neilson’s history of the Anglo-Russian relationship
under Nicholas II argues that although there were significant efforts to
democratise British foreign policy and to colour it with cultural, eco-
nomic and moral concerns, diplomacy was certainly the most important
strand.20 Michael Hughes puts more emphasis on the competition that
diplomats faced in attempting to determine foreign policy, but confirms
its limited effect.21
But while national policy may have been, as Neilson shows, relatively
unmoved by considerations of humanity, these humanitarian views of
Russia had the potential, at least, to undermine this primacy. The book
does not reject Neilson’s view, but rather focuses on an understanding
of the humanitarian strands as shaped in relation to historically specific
political relations and transnational connections. In this way it does
17 Carole Fink, Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and
Old Diplomacy, 1894–1917 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), Hughes notes criticism
of the ‘old diplomacy’ by liberals and others.
8 L. Kelly
not try to argue that humanitarianism was any more important in this
context than it was; rather it seeks to emphasise the important innova-
tions, contradictions and continuities. For instance, we cannot under-
stand foreign responses to Bolshevik Russia without reference to the
‘humanitarian’ views of the country developed by non-governmental lib-
eral, labour and humanitarian figures before this point (particularly with
respect to the peasantry and public health). In 1921, the famine had
become a major foreign policy issue, partly because of the development
of the League of Nations and traditions of humanitarian intervention in
the West, and partly as a result of ideological debates about the Soviet
Union.22
Yet to analyse ‘humanitarianism’ in itself, as a principle motivat-
ing interventions, creates its own pitfalls. Gary Bass is a political scien-
tist whose history perhaps overstates the role of humanitarianism as an
ideal, concerned as he is to prove that it goes back further than com-
monly thought. Whereas he provides thorough analyses of the build-
ing of humanitarian campaigns in favour of the Greeks or Armenians,
his overall argument nevertheless exhibits a progressive bias. His focus
is on demonstrating the capacity of a notion of ‘humanity’ to mobilise
action, and he therefore downplays the ways that this was entwined in
other discourses like nationalism, religion or imperialism. For instance,
he argues with respect to the interventions on behalf of Christians in
Eastern Europe that ‘Christianity was certainly part of the story, but
not the whole of it. Some of the most important activists hoped to
save humanity, not just Christianity’, and he points to the humanitar-
ian campaigns operating beyond confessional or national boundaries.23
Others, not studying humanitarianism for its own sake, but how it was
part of other power dynamics, consider Christian, national or ideologi-
cal interests to be more important. As Abigail Green shows, ‘the ques-
tion of Jewish rights in Muslim lands was a vital test case for British
efforts to spread the values of Victorian civilization through an imperial-
ism of human rights.’ Humanity was only part of the story, and it is the
other parts that explain why, for instance, the support for Jewish rights
22 Indeed, several left-wing British and Americans worked with the famine relief teams
and used their experiences as the basis for positive books on the Soviet experiment, discuss-
ing its healthcare, education and so on. See Chap. 6.
23 Gary Jonathan Bass, Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention, 1st
24 Green, ‘The British Empire and the Jews: An Imperialism of Human Rights?’.
25 Rodogno.
1886–1917’, Religion, State and Society, 25.4 (1997), pp. 353–368 (p. 361).
27 Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Colony and Metropole in the English Imagination,
as the universalist sentiment that drove the work. Gill’s recent work on
the vocation of relief work also provides great insights. Focusing on the
‘contest over how authentic knowledge of suffering was adduced and
compassion best calculated’, she shows how forms of professional and
voluntary relief developed alongside changing positions on war, among
other factors. Humanitarianism is not static in principle or practice.28
What makes these works valuable is the wide context used, and the inter-
relation between different aspects, including a focus on micro-level tech-
niques as well as broader discourses of nation, religion, and so on.
The book therefore fills three gaps in the historiography. First, it
studies in depth the genesis of the humanitarian facets of the Anglo-
Russian relationship, as developed by non-state actors. These include
the debates over exiles’ rights and extradition, religious dissent, and fam-
ine. While they did little to affect Britain’s policy on Russia, they con-
tributed to a more general oppositional stance on foreign policy,29 and
the idea, at least, that humanitarian concerns should trump geopolitical
ones. Second, it analyses in greater detail the development of specific
humanitarian forms. That is, rather than considering humanitarian ide-
als in general, it looks at the development of specific humanitarian prac-
tices, deriving from public pressure, professional techniques, and political
opportunities. The Quakers intervened to help the Russian Doukhobor
sect, not because of some general understanding of ‘freedom of con-
science’, but rather because of the interests of Christian groups, the
production of news, and, perhaps most importantly, because of their rep-
ertoire of expressions of solidarity. By reconstructing the various inter-
ventions, the book shows how humanitarian ideals and methods were
used in addressing this cluster of problems with what may be termed
humanitarian solutions, looking at how and why British liberals, Quakers
and others came to want to solve Russia’s problems. It asks: what were
the processes by which famine, religious dissent or political oppression
in Russia were designated as problems, and by which certain solutions
were developed? By so doing, it seeks to get a better grasp of the place of
28 Gill,p. 7.
29 Casper Sylvest, British Liberal Internationalism, 1880–1930: Making Progress?
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009); Duncan Bell, Reordering the World:
Essays on Liberalism and Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press), Chap. 11; Michael
Hughes, Diplomacy before the Russian Revolution.
BRITISH HUMANITARIAN ACTIVITY AND RUSSIA, C. 1890–1923 11
30 F.M. Leventhal, ‘H.N. Brailsford and Russia: The Problem of Objectivity’, Albion: A
Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 5.2 (1973), pp. 81–96.
31 Joseph O. Baylen, ‘Dillon, Emile Joseph (1854–1933)’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008 (http://www.oxforddnb.
com/view/article/32828, accessed 24 June 2013).
32 Fink.
Wars’, in International Health Organisations and Movements Between the Wars, ed. by Paul
Weindling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 1–16 (p. 4).
12 L. Kelly
Russia was big enough to offer a field for comparison, and in which to
show how humanitarianism grew alongside and was shaped by other dis-
courses. Indeed, it may have been seen as part of a general pattern, but in
many respects Russia presented an unusual story. Theodor Shanin identi-
fies the ‘specific social syndrome of what we call today a “developing soci-
ety”’ and argues that it first materialised in Russia in the late nineteenth
century.34 At the same time, Anglo-Russian humanitarian interactions
were more equal than those in the colonies. The strength of the coun-
try meant that humanitarian critiques led not so much to Western domi-
nation, as that they were channelled into liberal and radical visions of a
Russia both different from the tsar’s and from the capitalist West.35 In
this context, Russian writers and opposition figures provided the country
and its problems with a distinct and articulate voice, to the extent that
writers like Tolstoy and terrorists like Stepniak made British converts, and
Russia later became the first workers’ state. This was not, then, a universal
category applied to Russia, rather it was the result of a confluence of ideas
and interest, which fed into Russia’s unique social structure, with a large,
poor peasantry, a small, socially conscious nobility, and autocratic state,
and liberal, anarchist and Christian parts of British civil society. It is there-
fore a transnational and international, rather than comparative, approach,
emphasising the synchronous connections between the two countries.
p. xi; David C. Engerman, Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals
and the Romance of Russian Development (London: Harvard University Press, 2003); or
for Western views of Eastern European underdevelopment in general see Larry Wolff,
Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994).
35 Vera Tolz, ‘Russia and the West’, in A History of Russian Thought, ed. by William J.
Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp.
197–216; Franco Venturi, Francis Haskell and Isaiah Berlin, Roots of Revolution: A History
of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia (London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 1960); Steven G. Marks, How Russia Shaped the Modern World: From Art to
Anti-Semitism, Ballet to Bolshevism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).
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“It is an heirloom of my house,” said I. “It was given by my father to
my mother when he came to woo her.”
The Englishman raised his eyebrows with an aspect of grave
interest.
“Was that so, my young companion? Given by your father to your
mother—was that really the case? And set with agates, unless my
eyes deceive me.”
“Yes, they are agates.”
“The sight of agates puts me in mind of a ring I had of my old friend,
the Sophy. I used always to affect it on the middle finger of the right
hand, just as you affect your own, my son, until it was coveted by my
sainted mother upon a wet Ash Wednesday.”
Still exhibiting the tokens of a lively regard, the Englishman began to
fondle the ring as it lay on my finger.
“An honest band of gold, of a very chaste device. It looks
uncommonly choice on the hand of a gentleman. Does it not fit
somewhat loosely, my young companion?”
Speaking thus, and before I could suspect his intention, Sir Richard
Pendragon drew the ring off my finger. He held it up to the light, and
proceeded to examine it with the nicest particularity.
“I observe it was made in Milan,” said he. “It must have lain for years
in a nobleman’s family. My own was fashioned in Baghdat, but I
would say this is almost as choice as the gift of the Sophy. And as I
say, my son, it certainly makes an uncommonly fine appearance on
the hand of a gentleman.”
Thereupon Sir Richard Pendragon pressed the slender band of
metal upon the large fat middle finger of his right hand.
“It comes on by no means so easy as the Sophy’s gift,” said he; “but
then, to be sure, my old gossip had a true circumference taken by
the court jeweller. I often think of that court jeweller, such an odd,
brisk little fellow as ’a was. ’A had a cast in the right eye, and I
remember that when he walked one leg went shorter than its
neighbour. But for all that ’a knew what an agate was, and his face
was as open as a fine evening in June.”
With an air of pleasantry that was impossible to resist, Sir Richard
passed his cup and exhorted me to drain it. I drank a little of the
wine, yet with some uneasiness, for it was sore to me that my
father’s talisman was upon the hand of a stranger.
“I shall thank you, sir, to restore the ring to my care.”
“With all the pleasure in life, my son.” The Englishman took hold of
his finger and gave it a mighty pull, but the ring did not yield.
He shook his head and began to whistle dolefully.
“Why, as I am a good Christian man this plaguy ring sticks to my
hand like a sick kitten to a warm hearthstone. Try it, my son, I pray
you.”
I also took a pull at the ring, which was wedged so firmly upon his
hand, but it would not budge.
“This is indeed a terrible matter,” said Sir Richard Pendragon. “What
is to be done, young Spaniard?”
He called the innkeeper and bade him bring a bowl of cold water.
Into this he dipped his finger; and although he held it in the water for
quite a long time, the ring and his right hand could not be induced to
part company.
“What is the price you set upon this ring, my young companion?”
“The ring is beyond price—it was my mother’s—and has ever been
in the keeping of an ancient house.”
“If it is beyond price there is an end to the question. I was about to
offer you money, but I see you have one of those lofty spirits that can
brook no vulgar dross. Well, well, pride of birth is a good thing, and
money is but little. Yet one who has grown old in the love of virtue
would like to requite you in some way. Had we not better throw a
main with the dice? If I win I wear the ring for my lawful use; and if I
lose you shall have the good tuck that was given to me by the King
of Bavaria for helping him against the Dutch.”
I did not accept this suggestion, as you may believe. Yet it gave me
sore concern to see my father’s heirloom upon the hand of this
foreigner. In what fashion it was to be lured from his finger I was at a
loss to know; and in my inexperience of the world I did not know
what course to embrace.
CHAPTER V
I HEAR OF THE PRINCESS