Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/39

 Rh speedy exhaustion of Germany and were scoffing over Germany's measures to combat the blockade by adapting her economic and social structure to the new situation (which measures were welcomed as indications of her early breakdown), the results of the war and the blockade were striking at the very roots of the weak and undeveloped economic structure of Russia.

The Government was blind and indifferent; the Duma, after the demonstration of approval of the war, was prorogued and could not assert itself until the great defeat of the Russian armies in Galicia. And the manufacturers and merchants who were most concerned were, as usual, only looking to their profits, which, indeed, they were soon to have in unprecedented quantities. Even the menace of a speedy breakdown of industry was easily exploited by the industrialists, whose profits went up as goods in the markets went down. They started speculating and buying up in competition all the remaining stocks of goods, thus inflating prices still more and still further enhancing the difficulties for the national economy.

The struggle against the effects of this terrible economic isolation of Russia was left to the individual interests of speculators and profiteers.

It is a remarkable fact that Russia actually began to feel the pinch caused by the closing of the frontiers to German trade within a fortnight of the beginning of the war. Crowds of speculators flocked to Scandinavia and Roumania to buy substitutes for goods formerly imported from Germany; and it is noteworthy that the corrupt and stupid Government, in its attempt to "regulate" the activities of these men, could only work against the public interest.

The greater part of these new supplies were naturally of German origin or manufacture, and were, therefore, declared contraband, and the Government began to throw difficulties in the way of this traffic. The Government was so stupid and shortsighted as not to realise that the chief if not the only object of the blockade of