The Crisis in Russia | Page 5

both sides look in vain for the reasons of their bellicosity.

CONTENTS
Introduction The Shortage of Things The Shortage of Men The
Communist Dictatorship A Conference at Jaroslavl The Trade Unions
The Propaganda Trains Saturdayings Industrial Conscription What the

Communists Are Trying to do in Russia Rykov on Economic plans and
on the Transformation of the Communist Party Non-Partyism
Possibilities
***I am indebted to the editor of the "Manchester Guardian" for
permission to make use in some of the chapters of this book of material
which has appeared in his paper.

THE CRISIS IN RUSSIA

THE SHORTAGE OF THINGS

Nothing can be more futile than to describe conditions in Russia as a
sort of divine punishment for revolution, or indeed to describe them at
all without emphasizing the fact that the crisis in Russia is part of the
crisis in Europe, and has been in the main brought about like the
revolution itself, by the same forces that have caused, for example, the
crisis in Germany or the crisis in Austria.
No country in Europe is capable of complete economic independence.
In spite of her huge variety of natural resources, the Russian organism
seemed in 1914 to have been built up on the generous assumption that
with Europe at least the country was to be permanently at peace, or at
the lost to engage in military squabbles which could be reckoned in
months, and would keep up the prestige of the autocracy without
seriously hampering imports and exports. Almost every country in
Europe, with the exception of England, was better fitted to stand alone,
was less completely specialized in a single branch of production.
England, fortunately for herself, was not isolated during the war, and
will not become isolated unless the development of the crisis abroad
deprives her of her markets. England produces practically no food, but
great quantities of coal, steel and manufactured goods. Isolate her
absolutely, and she will not only starve, but will stop producing
manufactured goods, steel and coal, because those who usually produce
these things will be getting nothing for their labor except money which
they will be unable to use to buy dinners, because there will be no
dinners to buy. That supposititious case is a precise parallel to what has
happened in Russia. Russia produced practically no manufactured
goods (70 per cent. of her machinery she received from abroad), but

great quantities of food. The blockade isolated her. By the blockade I
do not mean merely the childish stupidity committed by ourselves, but
the blockade, steadily increasing in strictness, which began in August,
1914, and has been unnecessarily prolonged by our stupidity. The war,
even while for Russia it was not nominally a blockade, was so actually.
The use of tonnage was perforce restricted to the transport of the
necessaries of war, and these were narrowly defined as shells, guns and
so on, things which do not tend to improve a country economically, but
rather the reverse. The imports from Sweden through Finland were no
sort of make-weight for the loss of Poland and Germany.
The war meant that Russia's ordinary imports practically ceased. It
meant a strain on Russia, comparable to that which would have been
put on England if the German submarine campaign had succeeded in
putting an end to our imports of food from the Americas. From the
moment of the Declaration of War, Russia was in the position of one
"holding out," of a city standing a siege without a water supply, for her
imports were so necessary to her economy that they may justly be
considered as essential irrigation. There could be no question for her of
improvement, of strengthening. She was faced with the fact until the
war should end she had to do with what she had, and that the things she
had formerly counted on importing would be replaced by guns and
shells, to be used, as it turned out, in battering Russian property that
happened to be in enemy hands. She even learned that she had to
develop gun-making and shell-making at home, at the expense of those
other industries which to some small extent might have helped her to
keep going. And, just as in England such a state of affairs would lead to
a cessation of the output of iron and coal in which England is rich, so in
Russia, in spite of her corn lands, it led to a shortage of food.
The Russian peasant formerly produced food, for which he was paid in
money. With that money, formerly, he was able to clothe himself, to
buy the tools of his labor, and further, though no doubt he never
observed the fact, to pay for the engines and wagons that took his food
to market. A huge percentage of