Page:Karl Kautsky - Georgia - tr. Henry James Stenning (1921).pdf/50

 fearful proportions in the conditions of restricted trade.

Add to this that Tiflis, instead of losing its inhabitants, revealed a large increase of population.

For with all its distress it was a paradise when compared with its neighbours, Armenia, Aserbaijan, and Russia, where Bolshevism reigns, not only with hunger and misery, but also with sullen silence and everlasting fear, with the lack of all freedom of speech and of the Press, with denunciations, arbitrary imprisonments and shootings, with brutality and cruelty. Those who, can flee from this hell—the counter-revolutionaries to Europe; the workers from the towns to the villages, many democratic and social-democratic intellectuals, and qualified workers fled to Tiflis. Even Bolshevists sometimes sought a refuge there, in order to recover from Communism. Through this immigration the intellectual life of the town was variously stimulated. Eminent men of learning and artists from Russia met together here. But the house famine was made ten times worse.

After high prices the housing shortage is the most generally diffused after-effect of the war. It is to be found even in New York. The war has used up so much capital, and so much of the productive forces, that with what is left one is only able to live laboriously from hand to mouth. There is neither capital nor resources for undertakings which will repay the outlay on them only after many years. Above all, not for buildings. All building activity is paralysed. In addition, numerous dwelling-places situated on the various theatres of war have been destroyed, and the inhabitants driven into countries which were spared by the war. In those counties the accommodation, not having been increased suffices no longer.

Again, in those countries which did not take part in the war the population has been increased by the normal processes, which still more accentuates the housing difficulty.

Although the shortage is by no means confined to Tiflis, together with the lack of food, it has been