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 ablockade, 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-****** and shell- ****** 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 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 forthree 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, in1918 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.