Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/44

32 turers during the so-called mobilisation of industry for war purposes.

The first factor—the enemy invasion and devastation of the chief industrial districts—made Russia's plight not unlike that of France. But whereas the misfortunes of France were largely relieved by the Allies and America, Russia, cut off as she was from the whole world, was unable to replace her industries which were destroyed in those campaigns. At a very early stage in the war a heavy blow was inflicted on the national economy of Russia by the devastation of Poland and its severance from the Empire. There is no doubt that Poland was one of the most important industrial districts of Russia, being rich in raw materials and, which is especially important, in coal. The "Dombrova" coal region in Poland was certainly less rich in coal than the Donetz Basin, but its nearness to the Riga and Petrograd industrial areas greatly increased its economic importance. Again, the Riga district, famous for its machine and iron industry, was evacuated in 1915 during the first German attempt to force the Gulf of Riga. Officially it was called evacuation. But, in fact, it was merely a panic-stricken and unsystematic process of destruction, in which some of the largest and best equipped factories in the country, such as the "Vulcan" and "Russo-Baltic" works, were cruelly and senselessly demolished. It certainly must not be imagined that the devastation by war of Russia's industry was anything similar to that which took place in Belgium and Northern France. It was not a case of factories and buildings being levelled to the ground as on the Somme; but the economic effect of the campaigns in Poland and Western Russia was none the less disastrous. Three times the country was crossed and re-crossed by the contending armies, and by the end of that time the industrial areas in question were virtually non-existent so far as the national economy of Russia was concerned.

But the actual devastation of Russia's industries