Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

Papers pertaining to the American Red Cross mission to Russia, 1917-1918, in the Joseph M. Bruccoli Great War Collection, Accession #10875-c, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This collection was given to the Library by Mrs. Margaret DuPriest, c/o Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc., of Columbia, South Carolina, on February 14, 1991, as part of the Joseph M. Bruccoli Great War Collection. The collection was purchased by the donor Mrs. DuPriest in 1980 from a warehouse sale in Brooklyn, New York, in an unspecified lot of miscellaneous books.

Biographical/Historical Information

The American Red Cross Mission to Russia consisting of twenty-nine personnel, was chaired by Dr. Frank Billings (1854-1932), a prominent physician of Chicago and expert on infectious disease. The business magnate William Boyce Thompson (1869-1930), who offered to pay the expenses of the expedition, accompanied the Mission as business manager and Dr. William S. Thayer (1864-1932), the professor of clinical medicine in the Johns Hopkins Medical School, was named Chairman of the Medical & Scientific Group of the Mission. Additional information concerning Thompson's contribution to the Mission can be found in his biography The Magnate William Boyce Thompson and His Time [1869-1930] by Hermann Hagedorn. A closely related manuscript collection that also describes American Red Cross work is the Papers of C.T. Williams (#10746-a).

The Mission traveled to Russia via Canada and Japan and arrived at Vladivostok on July 26, and Petrograd on August 7, 1917. Their immediate goal was to give the seventy tons of medical and surgical supplies which they had brought with them to the Russian army, and to find a way to co-ordinate the relief activities of the three agencies whose chief work was to supply war relief; the Sanitary Department of the army, the Russian Red Cross, and the All Union of Zemstvos and Towns.

Scope and Content Information

This collection consists of three manuscripts by Dr. William Sydney Thayer (1864-1932) describing the American Red Cross Mission to Russia, July 1, 1917-February 10, 1918, during the time of the Russian Revolution, and based upon notes taken by Thayer as events were transpiring. Thayer's diary of 164 pages describes the progress of the Mission from the time of its official formation in St. Paul to its return to the United States eight months later. The two smaller manuscripts deal with the experiences of the members of the Mission during the precipitous week that the Mission spent in Moscow during some of the worst of the fighting between the Bolsheviks and the loyal troops.

Some of the topics covered in Thayer's diary are listed below with their appropriate page numbers and particular events can also be traced by the dates of the diary entries.

A description of the journey from Chicago to St. Paul, through Canada to Vancouver on the St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad and the Canadian Pacific Railroad (pp. 1-7)

The needs of the Russian army, especially for 125 ambulances, and a pediatrician to help rural children (p. 4)

The voyage on the Empress of Asia for Yokohama, Japan (pp. 8- 19)

Description of their stop-over in Japan (pp. 20-35)

Travel over the Trans-Siberian Railroad, from Vladivostok to Petrograd, through Manchuria and Mongolia (pp. 36- 52)

Description of Harbin, Manchuria (p. 40)

William Boyce Thompson's collecting activities on the journey (p. 42)

Equestrian exhibition by some Manchu "cowboys" along the railroad track (p. 42)

Arrival at Petrograd (p. 52)

Anti-Jewish sentiment expressed concerning the Russian Revolution, the Russian Red Cross, and their involvement with the Bolsheviks (pp. 5, 53-56 and following)

Description of Thompson (pp. 9, 18)

McCarthy, associate of the Phipps Institute for Tuberculosis (p. 11) and disagreement with Thompson over the ambulance corps (p. 90)

Various committees of the American Red Cross Mission to Russia (p. 12)

Anecdote concerning Kaiser Wilhelm and a Belgian abbess told by the Belgian Ambassador to China, Paul May (p. 12)

Raymond Robins (pp. 14, 16, 49, 69, 100, 101, & 103)

Conditions in Petrograd (pp. 53, 67-68, 110, and following)

Hart of the Y.M.C.A. (pp. 54, 57)

Difficulty in co-ordinating the relief agencies of the various nationalities with the several different Russian groups (pp. 60-62, 66, 74, 8O)

Stevens Railroad Commission (pp. 68-69)

Work of German agents against the Allied effort in Russia (pp. 67, 70)

Activities of General Lavr Kornilov (pp. 71, 77, 88-89)

Problems in Romania (p. 72)

The co-operation of the Zemstvo Unions and the Red Cross (pp.73-74)

The Russian women's "Batallion of Death" (p. 75-76)

Reaction of factory workers to the Revolution (p. 77a)

The fall of Riga and the utter chaos in the Russian army where even medical decisions were said to be voted upon by soldiers' committees (pp. 82- 83, 85)

Discussion of scurvy (pp. 83- 84)

The Kurds and Armenia (p. 91)

McCarthy's discontent with the Red Cross Mission and its treatment of himself (pp. 92-95)

The Polish Army Corps (p. 95)

Lady Muriel Paget and artificial limbs manufacture (pp. 90, 97)

The end of the Kornilov affair (pp. 98-99)

Mme. [Catherine] Breshkovsky - "the grandmother of the revolution" (p. 100)

Anti-American meetings in Petrograd (p. 103)

Attempts to secure some of the Lied Cargo brought to Archangel for the Romanian Red Cross Mission (p. 106)

Speech by Leon Trotsky (p. 108)

Thoughts re the poet Alan Seeger who joined the French Foreign Legion (p. 111)

Departure for Moscow and subsequent stay (pp. 115-127)

Ballet in Moscow (p. 116)

News of the seizure of Petrograd by the Bolsheviks (p. 118)

The accomplishments of the Mission so far (pp. 119-121)

Thompson's plan for propaganda (pp. 119- 120)

Fear of the unruly soldiers in Moscow expressed by the persons staying with Thayer in the hotel (pp. 121-122)