‘Charity Begins at Home’?: Humanitarianism, the Irish Save the Children Fund and the Volga Famine Campaign in 1920s Ireland
Journal: Contemporary European History
Year: 2025

This article explores the little-known response of the Irish Save the Children Fund to famine in Soviet Russia and Ukraine from 1921, as well as to hunger in the west of Ireland in 1924–5. Drawing on wide-ranging sources from the Cadbury Research Library, the Women’s Library at LSE and elsewhere, it examines the translation of humanitarian relief into different local, national and transnational contexts. The Volga famine was a seismic moment in inter-war humanitarianism and the initial focus of