The Crisis in Russia | Page 7

possible to restore to the
workmen or to the factories the favorable material conditions of
1912-13. Thus the main fact in the present crisis is that Russia
possesses one-fifth of the number of locomotives which in 1914 was
just sufficient to maintain her railway system in a state of efficiency
which to English observers at that time was a joke. For six years she
has been unable to import the necessary machinery for making engines
or repairing them. Further, coal and oil have been, until recently, cut off
by the civil war. The coal mines are left, after the civil war, in such a
condition that no considerable output may be expected from them in
the near future. Thus, even those engines which exist have had their

efficiency lessened by being adapted in a rough and ready manner for
burning wood fuel instead of that for which they were designed.

Let us now examine the combined effect of ruined transport and the six
years' blockade on Russian life in town and country. First of all was cut
off the import of manufactured
goods from abroad. That has had a cumulative effect completed, as it
were, and rounded off by the breakdown of transport. By making it
impossible to bring food, fuel and raw material to the factories, the
wreck of transport makes it impossible for Russian industry to produce
even that modicum which it contributed to the general supply of
manufactured goods which the Russian peasant was accustomed to
receive in exchange for his production of food. On the whole the
peasant himself eats rather more than he did before the war. But he has
no matches, no salt, no clothes, no boots, no tools. The Communists are
trying to put an end to illiteracy in Russia, and in the villages the most
frequent excuse for keeping children from school is a request to come
and see them, when they will be found, as I have seen them myself,
playing naked about the stove, without boots or anything but a shirt, if
that, in which to go and learn to read and write. Clothes and such things
as matches are, however, of less vital importance than tools, the lack of
which is steadily reducing Russia's actual power of food production.
Before the war Russia needed from abroad huge quantities of
agricultural implements, not only machines, but simple things like axes,
sickles, scythes. In 1915 her own production of these things had fallen
to 15.1 per cent. of her already inadequate peacetime output. In 1917 it
had fallen to 2.1 per cent. The Soviet Government is making efforts to
raise it, and is planning new factories exclusively for the making of
these things. But, with transport in such a condition, a new factory
means merely a new demand for material and fuel which there are
neither engines nor wagons to bring. Meanwhile, all over Russia,
spades are worn out, men are plowing with burnt staves instead of with
plowshares, scratching the surface of the ground, and instead of
harrowing with a steel-spiked harrow of some weight, are brushing the
ground with light constructions of wooden spikes bound together with
wattles.
The actual agricultural productive powers of Russia are consequently

sinking. But things are no better if we turn from the rye and corn lands
to the forests. Saws are worn out. Axes are worn out. Even apart from
that, the shortage of transport affects the production of wood fuel, lack
of which reacts on transport and on the factories and so on in a circle
from which nothing but a large import of engines and wagons will
provide an outlet. Timber can be floated down
the rivers. Yes, but it must be brought to the rivers. Surely horses can
do that. Yes, but, horses must be fed, and oats do not grow in the
forests. For example, this spring (1920) the best organized timber
production was in Perm Government. There sixteen thousand horses
have been mobilized for the work, but further development is
impossible for lack of forage. A telegram bitterly reports, "Two trains
of oats from Ekaterinburg are expected day by day. If the oats arrive in
time a considerable success will be possible." And if the oats do not
arrive in time? Besides, not horses alone require to be fed. The men
who cut the wood cannot do it on empty stomachs. And again rises a
cry for trains, that do not arrive, for food that exists somewhere, but not
in the forest where men work. The general effect of the wreck of
transport on food is stated as follows: Less than 12 per cent. of the oats
required, less than 5 per cent. of the bread and salt required for really
efficient working, were brought to the forests. Nonetheless