A partial explanation is obvious.The main impulse of the revolution came from the town workers.Of these, the metal workers were the most decided, and those who most freely joined the Red Guard in the early and the Red Army in the later days of the revolution.Many, in those early days, when there was more enthusiasm than discipline, when there were hardly any experienced officers, and those without much authority, were slaughtered during the German advance of 1918.The first mobilizations, when conscription was introduced, were among the workers in the great industrial districts.The troops from Petrograd and Moscow, exclusively workmen's regiments, have suffered more than any other during the civil war, being the most dependable and being thrown, like the guards of old time, into the worst place at any serious crisis.Many thousands of them have died for the sake of the revolution which,were they living, they would be hard put to it to save.(The special shortage of skilled workers is also partially to be explained by the indiscriminate mobilizations of 1914-15, when great numbers of the most valuable engineers and other skilled workers were thrown into the front line, and it was not until their loss was already felt that the Tsar's Government in this matter came belatedly to its senses.)But these explanations are only partial.The more general answer to the question, What has become of the workmen? lies in the very economic crisis which their absence accentuates.Russia is unlike England, where starvation of the towns would be practically starvation of the whole island.In Russia, if a man is hungry, he has only to walk far enough and he will come to a place where there is plenty to eat.Almost every Russian worker retains in some form or other connection with a village, where, if he returns, he will not be an entire stranger, but at worst a poor relation, and quite possibly an honored guest.It is not surprising that many thousands have "returned to the land" in this way.
Further, if a workman retains his connection, both with a distant village and with a town, he can keep himself and his family fat and prosperous by ceasing to be a workman, and, instead, traveling on the buffers or the roof of a railway wagon, and bringing back with him sacks of flour and potatoes for sale in the town at fantastic prices.Thereby he is lost to productive labor, and his uncomfortable but adventurous life becomes directly harmful, tending to increase the strain on transport, since it is obviously more economical to transport a thousand sacks than to transport a thousand sacks with an idle workman attached to each sack.Further, his activities actually make it more difficult for the town population to get food.By keeping open for the village the possibility of selling at fantastic prices, he lessens the readiness of the peasants to part with their flour at the lower prices of the Government.Nor is it as if his activities benefited the working population.The food he brings in goes for the most part to those who have plenty of money or have things to exchange for it.And honest men in Russia to-day have not much money, and those who have things to exchange are not as a rule workmen.The theory of this man's harmfulness is, I know, open to argument, but thepractice at least is exactly as I have stated it, and is obviously attractive to the individual who prefers adventure on a full stomach to useful work on an empty.Setting aside the theory with its latent quarrel between Free Trade and State control, we can still recognize that each workman engaged in these pursuits has become an unproductive middleman, one of that very parasitic species which the revolutionaries had hoped to make unnecessary.It is bad from the revolutionary point of view if a workman is so employed, but it is no less bad from the point of view of people who do not care twopence about the revolution one way or the other, but do care about getting Russia on her feet again and out of her economic crisis.It is bad enough if an unskilled workman is so employed.It is far worse if a skilled workman finds he can do better for himself as a "food speculator" than by the exercise of his legitimate craft.From mines, from every kind of factory come complaints of the decreasing proportion of skilled to unskilled workmen.The superior intelligence of the skilled worker offers him definite advantages should he engage in these pursuits, and his actual skill gives him other advantages in the villages.He can leave his factory and go to the village, there on the spot to ply his trade or variations of it,when as a handy man, repairing tools, etc., he will make an easy living and by lessening the dependence of the village on the town do as much as the "food speculator" in worsening the conditions of the workman he has left behind.