{"value"=>"<p>Roughly nine-tenths of Series 1 consists of correspondence, mostly Russell's copies of her outgoing letters. (As mentioned in the Scope and Content Note, Russell seems to have weeded her letter files periodically.) From 1918 to the early 1930s, most of these letters were to her family and to the \"Asilomar group\", the aggregate of college YWCAs in California, Arizona, and Nevada that raised funds to support her work in China. These letters include lively descriptions of the communities in which she lived and worked, the activities she shared with her friends, and her travels in different parts of China and Asia. Of particular note as well are Russell's letters to Mary Bentley and the Asilomar group that were written during her visit to the U. S. S. R. in 1932. (Very little else of the correspondence between Russell and Bentley is among these papers; the whereabouts of those letters, if they have survived, is unknown).</p> <p>Correspondence from the late 1930s and early 1940s documents the challenges of living and working in central China during wartime. Most of the letters from this period are to YWCA colleagues in the U. S. and in other parts of China.</p> <p>There is almost no incoming correspondence from 1918-1943, except for a number of letters of condolence Russell received after Bentley's death in November 1940. There are also scattered letters from relatives, and a few from such friends and acquaintances as Rewi Alley, Cora Deng, and Soong Ching-ling (Mme. Sun Yat-sen).</p> <p>Letters from the middle and late 1940s mainly concern Russell's work for the Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy. Along with the chronological files in Box 5 are separate files of correspondence between Russell and Evans Carlson, Agnes Smedley, Edgar Snow, and Anna Louise Strong, all concerning a mixture of personal and CDFEP-related matters.</p> <p>The volume of incoming correspondence increases markedly in the 1950s. From 1951 to about 1980, virtually all of these letters are from Russell's friends in China, chiefly Talitha Gerlach in Shanghai and Rewi Alley, Anna Louise Strong, Israel Epstein, Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley, and David and Isabel Crook in Peking. Most of these letters contain accounts of life and work in the People's Republic of China, frequently including information that Russell used in compiling the <em>Far East Reporter</em>. Letters written during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) are often as notable for what they omit as for what they relate.</p> <p>Correspondence files from the last eight years of Russell's life show no sign of having been weeded. There are letters to and from her sister and nieces, old friends from her crosscountry lecture tours, and U. S. - China People's Friendship Association members, as well as the \"China hands. \".</p> <p>Researchers should note that there are also two boxes of Russell's correspondence, 1949-1982, in Series 10, consisting mostly of letters from Russell to Ira Gollobin that she wrote during her travels across the country and her trips to China.</p> <p>Interfiled among the correspondence are the texts of trans-Pacific radio broadcasts made by Russell from China in the 1930s and early 1940s, and talks she gave in the New York area about China in the mid-1940s. The writings in Series 1 consist mostly of Russell's translations of political handbills in Wuhan and her term papers for her courses in social work at Columbia; of note also is an article from 1939, \"Notes From a Summer Vacation in Yenan\", describing her visit to the Chinese Communist Party headquarters there.</p> <p>Speeches and writings by Russell that pertain specifically to the Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy and the <em>Far East Reporter</em> are found in Series 2 and Series 3.</p>"}