Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Russian Revolution (1921).pdf/84



One of the most pronounced features of the revolution is the industrial collapse which is accompanying that great movement. This collapse is profound, far-reaching, and persistent. To remedy it is the supreme problem of the revolution. But it is stubbornly resistent to all treatment: despite heroic measures for many months past the productivity of the basic industries still remains at only 3 to 25 per cent of normal. The consequence is that the Russian people have been forced into such an acute shortage of life necessities as to menace the existence of the revolution itself.

Many factors have combined to bring about this industrial crisis, but here I can touch upon only a few. The first in importance is the blockade, to which Russia has been subjected almost uninterruptedly since 1914, to begin with by the Central Powers during the great war, and then by the whole capitalist world since the revolution. This infamous measure has literally strangled Russian industry.

Russia is not a complete, self-sustaining economic unit. At the outbreak of the world war her industry was still in a primitive state of development. The country produced and exported great quantities of raw and semi-finished materials, such as grain, flax, lumber, leather, textiles, oils, etc. In return it imported enormous amounts of machinery, chemicals, etc., which were either not produced in Russia at all, or to only a limited extent, but which were absolutely indispensible to her industrial life. Much, if not most of Russian industrial equipment was of foreign make. The general condition was well instanced by a power plant I visited not far from Moscow. There were four engines in it: two from Germany, one from England and, one of Russian make. The Russian capitalists drew upon the whole world for their machinery. When the blockade began in 1914 the importation of the many vital industrial necessities stopped short, and as the country was not equipped to produce them itself, industry immediately commenced to suffer. During the great