Page:Karl Kautsky - Georgia - tr. Henry James Stenning (1921).pdf/31

 overcome by the attractive force which petroleum could have exerted.

The commodity most in demand for export was still manganese, which was not dependent on the Russian market. Of the million tons of ore which Georgia exported in 1913, merely one per cent, went to Russia; on the other hand, 38 per cent, went to Germany, 22 per cent, to England, and 17 per cent, to Belgium. From the outbreak of war up to the present time the export of this commodity has suffered considerably from transport difficulties.

These difficulties, which were not created by the democratic régime, formed, together with the backwardness of agriculture, the chief cause of the blight which rested after the revolution upon the Georgian paradise.