Maxim Litvinov Quotes
Food is a weapon.
Maxim Litvinov, 1876-1951, Russian Diplomat, Remark to Walter Folger Brown, Riga, Latvia, 1921
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
So often diplomatic negotations are ongoing about “solutions” to world problems while people in crisis do not get any immediate help which is needed.
In 1921, there was a terrible famine in Communist Russia. The United States was ambivalent about humanitarian relief to the leading Bolshevik county while there were Communist supporters in the U. S. who were setting off bombs and calling for the overthrow of the democratic government. Herbert Hoover persuaded President Warren G. Harding that food aid relief was a moral obligation and would do much to weaken Bolshevism. 400 ARA Americans went to Russia and hired over 120,000 Russians to implement the relief program. Rarely in human history have this few people with the resources made available to them saved as many lives as Hoover and his staff did. A number of the Americans died in Russia from disease and those who survived worked under near impossible conditions. Ironically, while it created much good will towards the United States, many including Hoover suspected that the program and the pressure that the Americans put on the Soviet Government officials for more efficient administration may have forced the Soviet Government to learn how to organize much of othe society like the railroads, thus strengthening the Communist Party’s control over the country.
Most American policy makers have believed that food should not by used as a weapon on moral and humitarian grounds. Butz was an ultra-conservative who were among the few that were willing to use food to achieve political opbjectives even it it meant starving people in other countries.
Maxim Maximovich Litvinov was a Russian revolutionary and prominent Soviet politician.
