Case Study of Roswell Garst’s Efforts During the Cold War
Author: Eric Elliott
The conflict between Harry S. Truman and, former Vice President, Henry A. Wallace and the stances each man took with regards to the volatile relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II has been the subject of many historical works. President Truman took a “get tough” approach when it came to the Soviet Union failing to see any chance of cooperation or common ground between the two adversaries, and many of his policies established the parameters for the creation of the Cold War. Wallace took a more amicable approach towards the Soviet Union and believed the two superpowers should work together to rebuild the war-torn world. Wallace’s approach to foreign policy and the belief the United States work closely with the Soviet Union directly impacted Roswell Garst and his idea of “Peace through Corn.”
This paper offers a case study of Roswell Garst, an Iowa farmer and close personal friend of Henry Wallace, and his unlikely friendship with Soviet Premiere Nikita Khrushchev in the mid-1950s. Garst’s continuation of Wallace’s efforts during the Cold War gives one a brief glimpse of what the world could have looked like had Wallace been president in 1945 instead of Harry Truman.
Wallace often spoke of creating one world with sustainable peace and not a polarized version of East versus West. No speech better exemplified this ideology than his 1946 “The Way to Peace” speech for which he was asked to resign his cabinet position. In that speech,
Wallace spoke of achieving peace through cooperation and trade with Russia. This idea heavily influenced a wealthy Iowa farmer and good friend of Henry Wallace, Roswell Garst. Garst had a long relationship and friendship with Wallace dating back to 1926 when a family member
introduced the two men.1 Wallace and Garst discussed their common interests in farming and the many issues that led to the declining farm economy after World War I. Garst recognized the importance of the farm industry in the United States and what it meant for the world economy.
The hybridization of corn was the key reason Garst was drawn to Wallace. After their first meeting in 1926, Garst proved to be one of the most successful salesmen of Wallace’s hybrid seed corn, eventually creating his own strains and becoming a wealthy and influential farmer. Novelist John Dos Passos claimed that Garst “had a slow persuasive expository way of talking. His manner was between that of a lecturer explaining the solution of a problem at a black board, and a lawyer pleading with a jury. There was a disarming friendliness in his voice that had a way of dissolving objections before you brought them up.”2 This passionate oration served Garst well throughout his life, and it seemed he could get his way on almost anything.
His influence and prestige grew in the state, and he worked tirelessly to promote the importance of agriculture during World War II.
Garst knew the importance of supplying food to the Allies and urged Midwestern farmers to support the war effort and create a surplus of food to send to Europe. Garst, like many
successful capitalists, also looked forward to the war’s end. He stressed the need for increasing the amount of surplus grain after the war to both help feed war-ravaged Europe and make a lot of money for American farmers, two ideas Wallace advocated since the 1920s. Since most of his experience was with corn, Garst concentrated most of his efforts on corn production. He always looked for a way to put more corn into production while also increasing the yields of each field, so he studied corn science, becoming an experimental scientist on his own.
1 Harold Lee, Roswell Garst: A Biography (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1984), 30-31.
After he had success in the production of corn on his farm, Garst, influenced by Wallace’s talk of trade with the Soviet Union and the possibility of world peace, wanted to
implement these ideas on the world stage. Garst believed the grain surplus in the United States was a valuable weapon of peace. He wrote to Representative Clifford Hope of Kansas in July 1953:
I think if wheat and cotton and food were really given their rightful emphasis in place of armaments production we could curtail them. I just can’t get away from
the fact that two billion dollars worth of food and fourteen billion dollars worth of armaments is better than sixteen billion dollars worth of armaments. I have yet to find a single person who doesn’t believe this to be true! I am going to keep it as my “theme song.”3
Two fortuitous events happened at this time for Garst. In July 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act, or Public Law 480, designed to “make efficient use of surplus agricultural commodities in furtherance of the foreign policy of the United States.”4 This law promoted the idea of food for peace, an idea both Wallace and Garst stressed for years. However, it was implemented only in countries considered “friendly” to the United States, posing a problem for working with the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries, which were considered a threat to the United States since the introduction of the Truman Doctrine in 1947.
Prior to Public Law 480, in March 1953 Nikita Khrushchev assumed power in the Soviet Union following the death of Joseph Stalin. Not a hardline communist dictator like Stalin, Khrushchev, for the most part, was a moderate who seemed genuinely concerned with the people of the Soviet Union. Though not innocent of using terror to get what he wanted, by any means, Khrushchev seems to have been less likely to purge opposition compared to his political rivals
3 Roswell Garst letter to Clifford Hope (July 2, 1953). Garst Papers Box 25 Folder 5. Iowa State University, Ames, IA.
Kaganovich, Malenkov, and Molotov.5 A significant factor in Khrushchev’s rise to power was his background in agriculture, a major concern in the Soviet Union at the time.
When the Bolsheviks took control of Russia in 1917, they promised to make white bread made from wheat plentiful and replace the dark bread made from rye. This meant moving production of wheat to areas of the country too cold to effectively produce wheat, resulting in twenty percent less grain supply.6 In fact, from 1913 to 1953, yields in the Soviet Union did not increase, and they produced only a third of what other European countries produced.7 To make a bad situation even worse, Stalin collectivized farms in 1927 and placed the agricultural lands under direct control of the Communist government. The farmers, working under serf-like conditions, were brutalized and forced to give most of the food they produced over to the state.
World War II further decimated the agricultural landscape in the Soviet Union, as citizens were used for the war effort, either at the front or in industrial centers making weapons. After World War II, the Soviet Union’s urbanization continued, in an effort to rebuild the war-ravaged cities. Many of the young men returning from the war decided to stay in the urban centers rather than return to the serf-like conditions of the farm, leaving very few people to produce enough to feed the urban populations.8
Under these conditions in 1953, Khrushchev stepped in and attempted to stop the crisis from worsening. He recognized that the industrial future as well as the economic future of the Soviet Union relied upon improving the agriculture of the country. Khrushchev looked outside the borders of the country for ideas of improving crop yields. It did not take long for
5 Roy A. Medvedev and Zhores A. Medvedev, Khrushchev: The Years in Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 17.
6 “Can Khrushchev bring Iowa to Siberia?,” The New Republic 133, no.11 (September 12, 1955), 4.
Khrushchev to see how successful the hybridization of corn was in the United States, and most of the leaders in that field were in Iowa. The key to success, in Khrushchev’s mind, was corn not only as a grain for bread but for feeding and keeping livestock healthy as well.9 In 1953 alone the United States had nearly thirty million hectares of land in corn production whereas the Soviet Union only had three and a half million hectares of land in corn production. Khrushchev wanted to create an “Iowa Corn Belt for Russia.”10 Khrushchev desired a chance to have “peaceful
competition,” so he needed a way to open diplomatic channels with the United States.11 After Khrushchev announced his wishes to improve relations and learn more about
American agricultural practices, Lauren Soth, chief of the editorial page of the Des Moines Register responded, “We have no diplomatic authority of any kind but we hereby extend an
invitation to any delegation Khrushchev wants to select to come to Iowa…we promise to hide none of our “secrets.”…Let the Russians see how we do it.”12
The United States and the Soviet Union negotiated a reciprocal agreement whereby Soviet delegates came to the United States and American delegates traveled to the Soviet Union with the purpose of agricultural development, a small breakthrough in the Cold War. In July 1955, Soviet delegates came directly to Iowa without stopping in Washington, much to the delight of Khrushchev, more eager to solve the problems with Soviet agriculture than opening diplomatic relations. The State Department and the Farm Bureau took the delegates to small farms across the state showing exactly how a small Iowa farm could produce so much. The Garst farm, being too large of an operation, was not selected. However, two of the delegates
10 Lee, Roswell Garst, 177-178.
were staying with Garst’s first cousin, Warren, in Jefferson, Iowa, only twenty-five miles from his farm.13
Warren Garst invited one of the members of the delegation, Alexander Tulupnikov, to visit the Garst farm in Coon Rapids. Afterwards, Tulupnikov reported to Vladimir Matskevitch, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture for the Soviet Union, about Garst’s farm, later quipping he “discovered” Roswell Garst. Tulupnikov invited Garst to Ames to meet Matskevitch and arranged a visit to his farm in Coon Rapids. However, the State Department denied any changes to be made to the itinerary or to travel to Coon Rapids. Garst asked Matskevitch, “Do you know how to insist?”14 Matskevitch assured Garst he did, and the ploy worked. The next morning, he and the delegation took an unauthorized trip to Coon Rapids.
Garst was a successful businessman, but the day Matskevitch visited he concerned himself more with spreading the knowledge of successful agricultural techniques. He wrote his friend Arthur Becker:
I simply impressed them with the fact that hybrid seed corn was the real basis of corn belt production…and then I impressed them with the fact that I think a closer association between the Russians and the United States is a big step toward the easing of world tension-which I sincerely believe to be true-and that they could get lots of good information from us here at Coon Rapids. I think that’s all a pretty good start.15
Garst, pleased with the progress being made, had loftier goals. He wrote Iowa Senator Burke Hickenlooper, “instead of having a World War III in the foreseeable future. I think it is much
15 Roswell Garst letter to Arthur Becker (July 25, 1955). Garst Papers Box 23 Folder 3. Iowa State University, Ames, IA.
more likely that we will have a contest of economics-which I think is much more desirable from every stand point.”16
As a result of the Soviet delegation visiting Coon Rapids in September 1955, the Soviet Union extended an invitation for Garst to visit Russia. However, Garst also wanted to visit Eastern European countries as well. The State Department warned Garst that possibility would probably never happen because of the tight reign the Soviets had in those countries. Much to their surprise, the Soviet Union allowed Garst access to the farms and agricultural operations in Ukraine, Hungary, and Romania. He visited many of these sites giving a speech at nearly every stop. Most of his speeches touched on the same basic points; stressing the idea of a sustainable peace between the East and the West. His speech, almost rehearsed, went something like:
I would point out that if it was sensible to trade information on the peaceful uses of the atom as was done by all the countries at Geneva recently, then it was equally sensible for the world to trade information about how to produce more food- especially meat, eggs and milk- and that meat, eggs, and milk were best produced through the use of corn…and that I would therefore propose a toast “Peace through Corn.”17
As Garst gave speeches in Ukraine and visited more farms, Matskevitch informed him that Khrushchev had invited him to his dacha on the Black Sea. Garst met with Khrushchev and the two were fond of each other immediately, talking about agriculture and the Americanized way to plant corn. Eventually they discussed the possibility of buying seed corn. Garst informed Khrushchev he needed the approval of the State Department, and after finishing their business talk, the atmosphere became more jovial and light-hearted. Khrushchev enjoyed the conversations with Garst, and Garst, not afraid to say anything, asked why the Soviets knew so little about American agriculture when U.S. farm journals made it readily available. He joked
16 Roswell Garst letter to Burke Hickenlooper (July 26, 1955). Garst Papers Box 25 Folder 4. Iowa State University, Ames, IA.
the Soviets stole the secrets to the atomic bomb in three weeks so why not agriculture.18
Khrushchev laughed and said, “It only took two weeks. You locked up the atomic bomb, so we had to steal it. When you offered us all the information about agriculture for nothing, we thought that might be what it was worth—nothing.”19
After his visit with Khrushchev, Garst returned to Eastern Europe and discussed the sale of seed corn but also stressed the importance of other agricultural technology the Soviet’s lacked, such as fertilizers and tractors. He claimed in Romania alone eleven million people out of the seventeen million people in the country worked in the agricultural community and yet there were only twenty thousand tractors in the entire country.20 On November 3, 1955, Secretary of
Commerce Sinclair Weeks announced private commercial trade restrictions would be relaxed “to carry out further the objective urged by President Eisenhower at Geneva in July ‘to create conditions which will encourage nations to increase the exchange of peaceful goods throughout
the world’,” exactly the kind of progress Garst, and Wallace before him, hoped for when the tensions of the Cold War began.21 The trip to the Soviet Union and the other Soviet bloc countries was a success for Garst. Officials in the State Department announced, “Garst’s recent swing through Russia and her satellites netted him $1 ½ million in orders for seed corn.”22
The Soviet government wanted the approval of the State Department to allow ten
delegates into the United States to reciprocate Garst’s visit, but after arriving only four were allowed in. Garst went directly to the State Department offices and demanded that the delegates be allowed to enter. He threatened to write a letter to the Saturday Evening Post titled “Whose
18 Peter Carlson, K Blows Top (New York: Public Affairs, 2009), 206.
22 FBI file 105-13757 (November 25, 1955). Garst Papers Box 89 Folder 3. Iowa State University, Ames, IA.
Iron Curtain?” if they were not allowed in.23 Garst, by this time, had some prestige and notoriety so he was certain the article would make headlines. After a two-hour lecture, the delegates were allowed to enter. However, this did not compare to what happened to him when visiting Eastern Europe in 1956.
While Garst and his wife, Elizabeth, were in Hungary, clashes between the Soviet military and Hungarian students, protesting the presence of Soviet troops in the country, broke out. The Garsts were virtual prisoners in their hotel for ten days as Soviet tanks blocked the exits to the city.24 He saw the Soviets claim to work for peace but demonstrating the exact opposite.
When Garst returned home, he wrote his friend, Gabriel Reiner:
I am terribly disheartened about the recent turn of events. In the summer of 1955 when Matskevitch came over I thought I saw the first opening that might lead to a more peaceful world. That feeling grew in me all through the winter of ’55-’56- and all through the year 1956 until Budapest. It seems to me it is becoming worse daily since Budapest- and I do not see much likelihood in its reversing for quite a long period. It makes me heartsick of course- and I hope ever so much that I am wrong.25
It would be three years before the Garsts returned to the Soviet Union, but, in that time, the dividends of his actions were paying off. The average yields for corn in the Soviet Union from 1950-1954 were around 190 million bushels, in 1957 they increased to just under 300 million bushels and by 1958 they had risen to 600 million bushels.26 The increase in the yields resulted directly from the success of Wallace’s hybrid seed corn and Garst’s efforts to sell that seed technology to the Soviet countries. Garst claimed that in the Soviet Union there was “no hybrid seed corn in 1955, but nearly complete use in 1960.”27 He met again with Khrushchev
25 Roswell Garst letter to Gabriel Reiner (January 9, 1957). Garst Papers Box 32 Folder 2. Iowa State University, Ames, IA.
26 Lee, Roswell Garst, 222-223.
27 Roswell Garst letter to Henry A. Wallace (June 6, 1963). Henry A. Wallace Papers, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.
early in 1959. Garst, still disheartened by the events of Budapest in 1956, became more adamant than ever about stopping the arms buildup, in his discussions with Khrushchev. But Khrushchev largely ignored the comments and changed the subject back to agriculture. At the end of the visit, Elizabeth Garst, in typical Iowa nice fashion, told Khrushchev if he and his wife, Nina, were ever in America to make sure they stopped in to see them.28 In September of the same year, the Khrushchevs accepted the offer.
President Eisenhower invited Khrushchev to the United States to promote communication between East and West. Although the trip included many stops across the country including a meeting with President Eisenhower and a visit to the United Nations, the Garst farm in Coon Rapids excited him the most. Khrushchev later insisted, “The most important event on our
schedule was a visit to the farm of Mr. Garst.”29
Excitement for the visit also consumed the small town of Coon Rapids, however
reactions from the citizens varied. One person said, “I think Khrushchev coming here is a good idea. You never get anywhere fighting with your neighbors” and another claimed “I guess it’s all right. But we don’t think much of not believing in God.”30 One of Garst’s longtime customers cancelled an order of eighty bushels of corn and told him if he liked the Soviets so
much he should move to the Soviet Union, to which Garst promptly replied, “I don’t want to live with them—never have, of course, neither do I particularly want to die with them. With hydrogen and atomic bombs, I really think we have that choice—living with them or dying with them on this earth.”31 Garst reiterated his general philosophy: “It would be dangerous for the
29 Khrushchev, Nikita, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974), 449.
world to have a Russia that is both hungry and has the H-bomb. I never saw a well-fed, contented man who was really dangerous.”32
The evening before Khrushchev visited Coon Rapids, Des Moines city leaders held a banquet to welcome him. The room was filled with politicians, diplomats, and reporters but when Khrushchev saw Garst, Wiley Buchanan stated, “The chunky Russian spotted his friend
and advanced upon him in a kind of wrestler’s crouch, arms wide, grinning broadly. Garst arose and made a similar approach until finally they met in an embrace that reminded me of a couple of waltzing bears.”33 These two men truly had a friendship with one another, which allowed Garst to be blunt and to the point with Khrushchev. One newspaper reported the conversation between the two that night. Garst told Khrushchev:
You people can’t afford heavy armament. We can afford it better than you. We just take 10% out of our luxuries and automobiles. We’ve already got so many
automobiles we can’t find roads to drive them on or places to park them. But when you spend 10% on armaments, it comes out of utter necessities. We want
disarmament, but you’ll gain more than we do…If you give a little, you’ll probably find that we’ll give a little and we’ll meet each other half way.34
The day before the visit to Iowa Henry Wallace wrote his old friend, “Please convey to his excellence Nikita Krushchev [sic] my desire to join in welcoming him to Iowa, my native state. I like so many Iowans have long felt that complete understanding between the USSR and the USA would assure permanent world peace…Our work with corn, Roswell, if it contributes to world peace has been abundantly justified.”35 The visit to the Garst farm did not amount to much in the way of actual progress toward disarmament or even business. The main story of the
34 Hastings Nebraska Tribune (September 24, 1959). Garst Papers Box 84 Folder 5. Iowa State University, Ames, IA.
35 Henry A. Wallace letter to Roswell Garst (September 22, 1959). Henry A. Wallace Papers, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.
day was the hordes of press present during the visit, so numerous in fact, it prompted Garst to throw silage at reporters. He even had to kick one member of the press corps to stop them from trampling on his corn, drawing much delight from Khrushchev. However, when Khrushchev met with the press he took the opportunity to speak of the arms race. With the well-known
diplomat Adlai Stevenson at his side, he stated, “We talked about our hopes for doing away with the great arms burden that presses so hard on the world” and “we decided that the people want to be friendly and it doesn’t make much difference whether they are capitalists or communists.”36
After Khrushchev’s visit to Coon Rapids, Garst continued working closely with the Soviets and still had hopes of accomplishing a true world peace, apparent from a telegram he sent Khrushchev on Christmas Eve 1959. He wrote, “May 1960 bring better understanding and further progress in the easing of tensions and the development of good relations between not only our two countries but between all of the countries of the world. That is my hope and I feel
sure it is the hope of the people of the Soviet Union.”37 Although he was certain that a continued peaceful dialogue would continue, the Cold War began to get colder again.
Many events, both international and personal, slowed the progress made by Garst and Khrushchev. In May 1960, a United States U2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, the incident happening just before an East-West summit in Paris, prompting Khrushchev to demand an apology from President Eisenhower. Eisenhower first denied the incident but was later forced to admit blame. The construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 further strained international relations. Garst recognized the worsening atmosphere and realized disarmament was not very likely. He confided in Gabriel Reiner, “It takes longer than I thought it would take
36 Carlson, K Blows Top, 217-218.
37 Roswell Garst’s telegram to Nikita Khrushchev (December 24, 1959). Garst Papers Box 81 Folder 3. Iowa State University, Ames, IA.
to get some sensible approach toward disarmament…It is global insanity- and nothing else- for the world to spend 100 billion dollars a year preparing for a war that no one wants—no one expects—a war that no one could survive.”38
Garst’s health declined as well. In late 1959, he was hospitalized and diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. He left the business and diplomatic trips to his very capable nephew, John Chrystal, who had accompanied him several times. Chrystal would travel to the Soviet Union upwards of two to three times a year for the next thirty-six years and was “probably the most
widely traveled American in Russia…the unofficial ‘agricultural ambassador’ for exchange with the former U.S.S.R.”39 Decades after the Khrushchev visit to Coon Rapids, the Garst name was taught in history books throughout the Soviet Union. It is not uncommon even today to see Russian tourists and film crews visit the small rural town.
Wallace’s approach to foreign policy and the belief the United States work closely with the Soviet Union directly impacted Garst’s idea of “Peace through Corn.” The study of Garst’s continuation of Wallace’s efforts during the Cold War gives one a brief glimpse of what the world could have looked like had Wallace been president in 1945 instead of Harry Truman. Of course, there is no way to prove whether or not the Cold War would have happened or whether Stalin could have been trusted, but to see the impact Wallace had on just one man imagine the impact he would have had on the country.
39 Don Muhm and Virginia Wadsley, Iowans Who Made a Difference: 150 Years of Agricultural Progress. (West Des Moines: Iowa Farm Bureau Association, 1996), 56-57.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Various documents, newspaper articles, oral interviews, and letters located in the Henry A. Wallace Papers and Archive at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa.
Various documents, newspaper articles, and letters located in the Garst Family Archive at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.
Khrushchev, Nikita. Translated and Edited by Strobe Talbott. Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1974.
Secondary Sources
“Can Khrushchev bring Iowa to Siberia?” New Republic 133, no. 11. September 12, 1955. Carlson, Peter. K Blows Top. New York: Public Affairs, 2009.
Lee, Harold. Roswell Garst: A Biography. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1984.
Medvedev, Roy A. and Zhores A. Medvedev. Khrushchev: The Years in Power. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.
Muhm, Donald and Virginia Wadsley. Iowans Who Made a Difference: 150 Years of Agricultural Progress. West Des Moines: Iowa Farm Bureau Association, 1996.