April, May, June Letters, 22 April 1922-10 June 1922

This file of letters covers the last three months Marjorie Rackstraw was in Russia. Letters are sent from Buzuluk, and Alexievka, and are sparse during this time because courriers could not deliver mail to flooding from the thaw. She describes the Easter festivities, the still constant threat of thieves, and she cites that looking through the data she has taken, that 1 in 4 people have died in Buzuluk since she arrived. The food trains are arriving on schedule, and some signs of autumn sown rye is beginning to peak through the soil. The weather is good, and the news is that the American Relief Administration is finally getting aeroplanes, "what this country really needs", says Rackstraw. In May she describes the vegetables planted, and how glorious the weather is. She describes a system of work they have devised, in return for labor like sewing boys trousers, villagers can choose anything from the warehouse, and that the women are overjoyed to be able to do it. A Soviet secretary report sfrom Galkovka that no one has died of hunger for 3 weeks. Despite the good turnout, she says people are still grinding bones with grass to make their flour go further. She also cites the structure of the famine committee, and another conference coming up in Buzuluk. Another letter details the debacles of getting to a bazaar in Alexievka on roads riddled with trenches from floods. The June letters detail a double wedding, visiting people ill with typhus, more days of glorious summer weather, though signs of drought. She finishes stating the one thing the famine has brought about is that everyone now grows a kitchen garden, and are immensely proud of it. She is visited by a Harry Wiltshire, an educated Polish man, who brings her a fountain pen, but unfortunately lost the luggage containing pencils and supplies for the schools, who are quite desperate. In her last letter, she estimates that she will be heading home in about a week.