Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

lanning to operate in Russia. According to reports all United States organizations were to be brought under a centralized control in Russia, with the American Relief Administration having general supervi- sion over all the others. To make this effective, it was said that only approved personnel would be granted passports to go to Russia from the United States. This would op- erate to compel all United States Relief organizations, even though they already had their contracts with the 152 FEEDING THE HUNGRY Soviet Government (such as the Quakers and Menno- nites) to affiliate with, or place themselves under the su- pervision of the American Relief Administration. But at any rate we now had our own contract com- pleted. We had six experienced Mennonite Relief work- ers already in Europe and Asia, who would readily be admitted into Russia. The. shipment of supplies could easily be arranged through the Quaker organization, or the Nansen group, or the Save the Children Fund, or the Holland Mennonite Relief. As we had gained for our- selves these points of security, we were strategically in a most favorable position. Nevertheless it was thought best to confer now off- cially with the American Relief Administration. By this time Col. Haskell had arrived as Director. From him I learned that the exact procedure for effecting an affiliation had not yet been determined. He would take up the prob- lem as it concerned us and advise me later. Thus it rested until after my return from Kharkow, capital of the Ukrainian Republic, whither I had gone to make a second agreement of the same type as the first. THE UKRAINE INSISTS ON A CONTRACT When our contract was signed in Moscow by Lev B. Kamenev on behalf of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, it was assumed that this agreement would without further action apply with equal force to any of the political divisions of Soviet Russia. Presumably no further contracts would be necessary. In fact I had raised the question specifically as to whether or not this agree- ment would be binding in the other Soviet Republics— such as those of the Ukraine and Crimea. The Moscow officials assured me it would be. Nevertheless, just about the time our contract was UNSEALING THE CLOSED DOOR 153 signed in Moscow, it was learned that some of the other Soviet republics considered it undignified for them to ac- cept the foreign relief agreements made by Moscow with- out formal negotiations between themselves and the relief organizations direct. Especially insistent on ‘‘states rights” was the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic. The national consciousness was highly developed in this potentially rich state of the South with its wealth of coal and iron, its factories, and its vast plains of “‘black earth” which had made it one of the most important wheat pro- ducing countries in the world. At the head of the gover