Lend-Lease food aid to Russia/USSR during the Second World War

Abstract

After the publication of my paper on Lend-Lease food supplies to the Soviet Union in the journal Otechestvennaya Istoria (1996), the Russian-language Internet burst into both professional and nonprofessional comments and publications on the role of Lend-Lease food aid. The browsers’ searching machines at that time already proposed up to 20 publications for a request on the issue. In subsequent years, their number increased significantly, indicating a persistent interest in the topic. Almost all the participants in the discussion agreed about the important role of food supplies for the Soviet Union. However, opinions differed regarding the details. Some, clearly ignoring whole subparagraphs of my article, thought that I had included edible alcohol, feed grain, and seed stock in my calculations. However, I deliberately took those supplies out of the calculations, having stipulated this in the publication. Others, like S. Lugovskoy—the author of the translation and comments of the edited volume by E.R. Stettinius—without any analysis of the calculations simply stated that they were exaggerated. However, this did not prevent him from publishing his work on a translation of the chapters of Stettinius’ book from our book, The Northern Convoys, written nine years earlier. The other participants in the discussion found nothing better than to turn again to the old method of calculations in dollars and tons to determine the role of allies’ food in the overall production of the USSR—a method that I proposed abandoning, considering the calculation in calories to be the most correct, as was