Oksana Masters Quotes
They said if I stayed in the orphanage for another month or so, I basically would not have been able to be alive.
Masters, Oksana, and Cassidy Randall. The Hard Parts: A Memoir of Courage and Triumph. Scribner, 2023.
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.
Oksana Masters is a Ukrainian-American Paralympic rower and cross-country skier from Louisville, Kentucky. At the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, she won the first ever United States medal in trunk and arms mixed double sculls. She was also a part of the U.S. Nordic skiing team at the 2014 Winter Paralympics and the 2018 Winter Paralympics. She won two Paralympic medals in 2014 and five Paralympic medals in 2018, including two gold. She also competed at the 2016 Summer Paralympics in para-cycling.
