The Volga Relief Society

by Brent Mai, Director of the Center for Volga German Studies

Concordia University, Portland OR

October 16, 2010

After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the ethnic German colonists in the Volga region were forced to give up their seed wheat.  When the Germans resisted the forced requisition, they were stripped of all grain and mass executions were carried out.  Then, in 1920 and 1921, total crop failures occurred and one of the greatest famines in years set in.  In the German colonies of Samara and Saratov provinces, an estimated 170,000 men, women and children died of starvation.  Family and friends in the United States received letters from Russia describing the terrible conditions.  As a result, relief societies were organized in many states in which Volga Germans had settled. 

In Portland, Oregon, the Volga Relief Society was organized through the leadership of John Miller and George Repp, who led the effort to collect funds and donations to help their starving countrymen in Russia.  Another organization with similar goals, the Central States Volga Relief Society, arose at the same time in Lincoln, Nebraska.  In 1922, the two organizations merged to form the American Volga Relief Society (AVRS).  The AVRS operated through the American Relief Administration, headed by Herbert Hoover. 

Click HERE to see photos of the event.