Workers International Relief (WIR) was created on the initiative of the German communist Willi Münzenberg on September 12, 1921 to recruit international support in response to a drought and famine in Russia. The famine came at the end of seven years of unrest and warfare in World War I, revolutions, civil war and food requisitions by the Bolsheviks. Death toll is estimated at five million, cases of cannibalism were reported. The Bolshevik government grudgingly accepted help from the American Relief Administration (ARA) as well.
In subsequent years the WIR supported workers in other countries suffering from the effects of strikes, armed conflict, and natural catastrophes by distribution of clothes, food, and funds. It was dissolved in 1935.