Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/311

 1899.] Russia. — The Famine. — Foreign Capital. f303

Instruction and the other Minister having control of the insti- tutions in which disorders occurred were at the same time directed to take proper steps to induce their subordinates to fulfil their moral and official duties ; and, addressing the students, the Czar ordered them " to return peacefully to their duties and occupations/' adding that, with the exception of those accused of political actions and aspirations, the leaders of the agitation would be punished "with all possible con- sideration for their having been led away by the general agitation."

The disturbance produced in the country by the strikes of the working men and the students in the earlier months of the year was still further aggravated by the outbreak of famine. In the province of Samara and the adjacent districts the peasants perished in thousands from starvation and its usual accompani- ments, scurvy and typhus, and though the Red Cross Society made great efforts to relieve the prevalent distress, its resources were quite inadequate for this purpose. The region affected stretched from beyond the Ural Mountains on the east nearly as far as Moscow on the west, while from north to south it covered more than ten degrees of latitude. The failure of the crops in this district is said to have been the worst within the memory of man, and although 35,000,000 roubles were allotted for famine relief in the Budget, this sum proved wholly insufficient to supply even the most urgent wants of the inhabitants of six out of the eleven provinces affected. It is remarkable that the whole expenditure of the Russian Empire on agriculture, in a country where over 85 per cent, of the people depend on agri- culture for subsistence, is only about 5,000,000Z. a year, while the Army and Navy cost 52,000,000^. a year. In Southern Russia the distress was equally great, and at the end of the year whole villages were reported to be in a state of starvation.

The question of attracting foreign capital to Russia for the purpose of developing the industries of the country was one of those which most occupied the attention of the Government, and the speeches made by M. de Witte, the Minister of Finance, on this subject to the council of ministers and the commission charged to regulate the corn trade gave some valuable indica- tions of the policy of Russia in this respect. The industrial progress, he said, not only of Western Europe, but of almost the entire world, is advancing with such gigantic strides that the only alternative left to Russia, forced as she is by circum- stances to participate in the general turnover of international trade, is to employ every possible means of gaining upon her competitors. Every halt in her industrial advance is equivalent to an increase of the distance which already separates Russia from other countries in the matter of economical development. At the same time, there is so little native capital available for industrial enterprises that to refuse the co-operation of foreign capitalists in the exploitation of the natural riches of Russia