The Crisis in Russia | Page 6

the clothes and the tools and the
engines and the wagons and the rails came from abroad, and even those
factories in Russia which were capable of producing such things were,
in many essentials, themselves dependent upon imports. Russian towns
began to be hungry in 1915. In October of that year the Empress

reported to the Emperor that the shrewd Rasputin had seen in a vision
that it was necessary to bring wagons with flour, butter and sugar from
Siberia, and proposed that for three days nothing else should be done.
Then there would be no strikes. "He blesses you for the arrangement of
these trains." In 1916 the peasants were burying their bread instead of
bringing it to market. In the autumn of 1916 I remember telling certain
most incredulous members of the English Government that there would
be a most serious food shortage in Russia in the near future. In 1917
came the upheaval of the revolution, in
1918 peace, but for Russia, civil war and the continuance of the
blockade. By July, 1919, the rarity of manufactured goods was such
that it was possible two hundred miles south of Moscow to obtain ten
eggs for a box of matches, and the rarity of goods requiring distant
transport became such that in November, 1919, in Western Russia, the
peasants would sell me nothing for money, whereas my neighbor in the
train bought all he wanted in exchange for small quantities of salt.
It was not even as if, in vital matters, Russia started the war in a
satisfactory condition. The most vital of all questions in a country of
huge distances must necessarily be that of transport. It is no
exaggerationto say that only by fantastic efforts was Russian transport
able to save its face and cover its worst deficiencies even before the
war began. The extra strain put upon it by the transport of troops and
the maintenance of the armies exposed its weakness, and with each
succeeding week of war, although in 19l6 and 1917 Russia did receive
775 locomotives from abroad, Russian transport went from bad to
worse, making inevitable a creeping paralysis of Russian economic life,
during the latter already acute stages of which the revolutionaries
succeeded to the disease that had crippled their precursors.
In 1914 Russia had in all 20,057 locomotives, of which 15,047 burnt
coal, 4,072 burnt oil and 938 wood. But that figure of twenty thousand
was more impressive for a Government official, who had his own
reasons for desiring to be impressed, than for a practical railway
engineer, since of that number over five thousand engines were more
than twenty years old, over two thousand were more than thirty years
old, fifteen hundred were more than forty years old, and 147 patriarchs
had passed their fiftieth birthday. Of the whole twenty thousand only
7,108 were under ten years of age. That was six years ago. In the

meantime Russia has been able to make in quantities decreasing during
the last five years by 40 and 50 per cent. annually, 2,990 new
locomotives. In 1914 of the locomotives then in Russia about 17,000
were in working condition. In 1915 there were, in spite of 800 new
ones, only 16,500. In 1916 the number of healthy locomotives was
slightly higher, owing partly to the manufacture of 903 at home in the
preceding year and partly to the arrival of 400 from abroad. In 1917 in
spite of the arrival of a further small contingent the number sank to
between 15,000 and 16,000. Early in 1918 the Germans in the Ukraine
and elsewhere captured 3,000. Others were lost in the early stages of
the civil war. The number of locomotives fell from 14,519 in January to
8,457 in April, after which the artificially instigated revolt of the
Czecho-Slovaks made possible the fostering of civil war on a large
scale, and the number fell swiftly to 4,679 in December. In 1919 the
numbers varied less markedly, but the decline continued, and in
December last year 4,141 engines were in working order. In January
this year the number was 3,969, rising slightly in February, when the
number was 4,019. A calculation was made before the war that in the
best possible conditions the maximum Russian output of engines could
be not more than1,800 annually. At this rate in ten years the Russians
could restore their collection of engines to something like adequate
numbers. Today, thirty years would be an inadequate estimate, for
some factories, like the Votkinsky, have been purposely ruined by the
Whites, in others the lathes and other machinery for building and
repairing locomotives are worn out, many of the skilled engineers were
killed in the war with Germany, many others in defending the
revolution, and it will be long before it will be