Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/355

Rh Much more irksome were the requisitions and expropriations exercised in virtue of the eminent ownership of the Common- wealth. The Soviet was constrained to fall back on this means of extracting some supplies for feeding the army and the towns, but the decrees enjoining the confiscation of the entire produce with the exception of the quantity necessary for the subsistence of the husbandmen, could not fail to provoke a stubborn resistance. The answer of the peasantry was that the farmers restricted the area under seed to the extent necessary to feed them and their families. Why should they toil to increase cultivation if the fruits of their labour were to be taken from them? According to a Soviet authority (Larin) the quantity used for cultivation had shrunk from 5 milliard poods in 1917 to 23 milliard poods in 1920. The Soviet Government brought all the weight of its terroristic coercion to bear against this passive resistance. It sent punitive expeditions, it encouraged its privileged proletarians to raid the countryside for supplies, it issued a decree ordering the maximum of available soil to be taken over in cultivation and threatening recalcitrant farmers with confiscation and imprisonment: all in vain as far as the general results were concerned. The hardships and disorder were increased hundredfold, but it proved impossi- ble to drive a mass of 100,000,000 peasants by the whip to per- form work which was distasteful to them.

The Soviet dictators had to acknowledge their defeat, and in the spring of 1921 (on March 23), in view of a threatening famine, a decree was issued by the Executive Council of the Soviet recognizing and guaranteeing the private tenure of householders who would conform to the payment of a tax in kind. Instead of charging the provinces with certain lump sums to be partitioned among the uyezds (districts) and, lower down among the volosts, and to be collected from the harvest according to the require- ments of the Government, a land tax was imposed which had to be assessed according to the outfit and means of each separate household. It was calculated that this substitution of a land tax for the system of repartition amounted to the reduction from 470,000,000 poods of corn to 240,000,000. It remained to be seen whether the business of assessing and collecting the tax could be carried out with sufficient skill and fairness. The one positive asset of the revolutionary period from the point of view of the peasants consisted in the passage of land from the squires to the tillers, and this was certainly a conquest which the villagers were not going to give up. All attempts at political reconstruc- tion would have to reckon with this basic fact.

Industry. The history of industrial economy presents the same features, and describes the same curve, from partial disorgani- zation through blockade and war to general ruin in consequence of absurd Utopianism, and, ultimately, to desperate attempts to reconstitute production by reverting to methods condemned and destroyed by the Communists. There is, however, a notable difference: while the enormous block of the rural population was able to oppose unconquerable passive resistance to the dicta- tors in spite of terrorism and heavy losses, the scanty stratum of the industrial workers was almost worn out in the struggle.

We have again to start in our survey in the case from the years immediately preceding the Revolution. Bolshevik experi- ments were the culminating phase of a process of destruction which had started long before the Oct. 1917 upheaval: the guilt of the Communists consisted in the fact that instead of fighting the evil, they did everything in their power to aggravate it. The initial stage of industrial decay dates from the time when Russia was isolated from western resources by the Central Powers in alliance with Turkey and Bulgaria. The country had to attempt the impossible task of providing by its own primitive resources for the tremendous technical requirements of the war. The criminal levity of Tsarist administration under men like Sukhom- linov had left it with exhausted equipment and munitions by the end of some nine months of military operations, and an unsoluble problem was set to its patriotic leaders in 1915; they had to make up the deficiencies and to prepare further efforts. This meant technically that all the coal and all the railway machinery had to be diverted for the use of the army while the economic needs of the population were entirely disregarded. As a result, though,

with the help of Zemstvo and Municipal Committees acting for purposes of national defence, the fabrication of shells and ma- chine-guns was to some extent reestablished and maintained, the economic work in the rear necessary for production and re- pairs was rapidly deteriorating. Train service, for example, was officially suspended for weeks between Petrograd and Moscow in order to make room for military transport and the most urgent needs of food supply. Repairs of locomotives had to be carried out in a more and more imperfect and insufficient manner, and the statistics as to the state of rolling-stock presented drastic symptoms of a lamentable deterioration. The March 1917 Revolution accentuated all these evils because another cause of decay came to the fore with ever-increasing force : the discontent and the demoralization of the workers broke out like a stream of all-consuming lava. The responsibility for the sufferings of the time was laid entirely at the door of greedy capitalists, and the workers were convinced that they were justified in demanding increased wages and decreased labour. A Minister of Labour of the Provisional Government, Skobelev, upheld emphatically their contention.

The following tables give illustrations of the change in the condition of the rolling stock:

Engines.

Number of

Length of

Number of

Per cent, of

sound Loco-

Year

the Lines,

sound Loco-

Locomotives

motives per

in Versts

motives

out of order

100 Versts

of Line o/ /o

1914

64,000

17,000

15-16

27-28

1916.

65,000

16,000-16,800

16-17

26-27

1917, Jan.

64-526

17,012

16-5

26

June

62,952

15,930

24-2

25

Dec.

50.131

15,810

29-4

32

1918, June

25-422

5,676

39-5

22

Dec.

23,665

4,679

47-8

21

1919, June

24,688

4,739

49-o

19

Dec.

36,551

4,i4i

55-4

II

1920, Jan.

48,410

3,969

58-1

8

June

59,196

6,254

58-9

10-5

Repair of Engines.

1915

1916

1917

1918

1919 Jan. Feb.

Number of Engines repaired

797

1,177

640

405

25 21

Construction of New Engines.

Year

Number of new Engines constructed in Russia

1914 1915

1916



816 903 599 ^Q6

1918 1919

191

85

In the cotton industry of the Moscow district the earnings of skilled and unskilled workmen per day was as follows:

Unskilled workers

Carpenters of the

first category

Date

In kopeks

Per cent. 1919 = 100

In kopeks

Per cent. 1919 = 100

Easter 1914

46

2

155

3-9

Easter 1915

57

2-5

1 60

4-0

Dec. 1915

59

2-6

175

4-4

Easter 1916

68

3-o

200

5-o

Jan. 1917

68

3-0

250

6-2

Aug. 1917

145

6-3

575

14-4

Dec. 1917

800

34-8

1,950

48-7

June 1918

1,000

43-5

2,050

51-2

Sept. 1918

1,000

65-2

2,650

66-2

Feb. 1919

2,300

IOO

4,000

IOO

All partial attempts to put a stop to constant rioting, absentee- ism, and slackness availed nothing against the general intoxication of the " glorious revolutionary days.'