In the immediate aftermath of the war, the ARA delivered more than four million tons of relief supplies to 23 war-torn European countries.

In 1921, to ease the devastating famine in the Russian SFSR that was triggered by the Soviet government's war communism policies, the ARA's director in Europe, Walter Lyman Brown, began negotiating with the Russian People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, in Riga, Latvia (at that time not yet annexed by the USSR).

Hoover strongly detested Bolshevism, and felt the American aid would demonstrate the superiority of Western capitalism and thus help contain the spread of communism.

The Medical Division of the ARA functioned from November 1921 to June 1923 and helped overcome the typhus epidemic then ravaging Russia.

[7][8] In addition, the Vatican created a Papal Relief Mission under the ARA, headed by Father Edmund A. Walsh, SJ.