Much more irksome were the requisitions and expropriations
exercised in virtue of the eminent ownership of the Common-
wealth. The Soviet was constrained to fall back on this means of
extracting some supplies for feeding the army and the towns, but
the decrees enjoining the confiscation of the entire produce with
the exception of the quantity necessary for the subsistence of the
husbandmen, could not fail to provoke a stubborn resistance.
The answer of the peasantry was that the farmers restricted the
area under seed to the extent necessary to feed them and their
families. Why should they toil to increase cultivation if the
fruits of their labour were to be taken from them? According to a
Soviet authority (Larin) the quantity used for cultivation had
shrunk from 5 milliard poods in 1917 to 23 milliard poods in 1920.
The Soviet Government brought all the weight of its terroristic
coercion to bear against this passive resistance. It sent punitive
expeditions, it encouraged its privileged proletarians to raid the
countryside for supplies, it issued a decree ordering the maximum
of available soil to be taken over in cultivation and threatening
recalcitrant farmers with confiscation and imprisonment: all in
vain as far as the general results were concerned. The hardships
and disorder were increased hundredfold, but it proved impossi-
ble to drive a mass of 100,000,000 peasants by the whip to per-
form work which was distasteful to them.
The Soviet dictators had to acknowledge their defeat, and in the spring of 1921 (on March 23), in view of a threatening famine, a decree was issued by the Executive Council of the Soviet recognizing and guaranteeing the private tenure of householders who would conform to the payment of a tax in kind. Instead of charging the provinces with certain lump sums to be partitioned among the uyezds (districts) and, lower down among the volosts, and to be collected from the harvest according to the require- ments of the Government, a land tax was imposed which had to be assessed according to the outfit and means of each separate household. It was calculated that this substitution of a land tax for the system of repartition amounted to the reduction from 470,000,000 poods of corn to 240,000,000. It remained to be seen whether the business of assessing and collecting the tax could be carried out with sufficient skill and fairness. The one positive asset of the revolutionary period from the point of view of the peasants consisted in the passage of land from the squires to the tillers, and this was certainly a conquest which the villagers were not going to give up. All attempts at political reconstruc- tion would have to reckon with this basic fact.
Industry. The history of industrial economy presents the same features, and describes the same curve, from partial disorgani- zation through blockade and war to general ruin in consequence of absurd Utopianism, and, ultimately, to desperate attempts to reconstitute production by reverting to methods condemned and destroyed by the Communists. There is, however, a notable difference: while the enormous block of the rural population was able to oppose unconquerable passive resistance to the dicta- tors in spite of terrorism and heavy losses, the scanty stratum of the industrial workers was almost worn out in the struggle.
We have again to start in our survey in the case from the years immediately preceding the Revolution. Bolshevik experi- ments were the culminating phase of a process of destruction which had started long before the Oct. 1917 upheaval: the guilt of the Communists consisted in the fact that instead of fighting the evil, they did everything in their power to aggravate it. The initial stage of industrial decay dates from the time when Russia was isolated from western resources by the Central Powers in alliance with Turkey and Bulgaria. The country had to attempt the impossible task of providing by its own primitive resources for the tremendous technical requirements of the war. The criminal levity of Tsarist administration under men like Sukhom- linov had left it with exhausted equipment and munitions by the end of some nine months of military operations, and an unsoluble problem was set to its patriotic leaders in 1915; they had to make up the deficiencies and to prepare further efforts. This meant technically that all the coal and all the railway machinery had to be diverted for the use of the army while the economic needs of the population were entirely disregarded. As a result, though,
with the help of Zemstvo and Municipal Committees acting for purposes of national defence, the fabrication of shells and ma- chine-guns was to some extent reestablished and maintained, the economic work in the rear necessary for production and re- pairs was rapidly deteriorating. Train service, for example, was officially suspended for weeks between Petrograd and Moscow in order to make room for military transport and the most urgent needs of food supply. Repairs of locomotives had to be carried out in a more and more imperfect and insufficient manner, and the statistics as to the state of rolling-stock presented drastic symptoms of a lamentable deterioration. The March 1917 Revolution accentuated all these evils because another cause of decay came to the fore with ever-increasing force : the discontent and the demoralization of the workers broke out like a stream of all-consuming lava. The responsibility for the sufferings of the time was laid entirely at the door of greedy capitalists, and the workers were convinced that they were justified in demanding increased wages and decreased labour. A Minister of Labour of the Provisional Government, Skobelev, upheld emphatically their contention.
The following tables give illustrations of the change in the condition of the rolling stock:
Engines.
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Number of
Length of
Number of
Per cent, of
sound Loco-
Year
the Lines,
sound Loco-
Locomotives
motives per
in Versts
motives
out of order
100 Versts
of Line o/ /o
1914
64,000
17,000
15-16
27-28
1916 .
65,000
16,000-16,800
16-17
26-27
1917, Jan.
64-526
17,012
16-5
26
June
62,952
15,930
24-2
25
Dec.
50.131
15,810
29-4
32
1918, June
25-422
5,676
39-5
22
Dec.
23,665
4,679
47-8
21
1919, June
24,688
4,739
49-o
19
Dec.
36,551
4,i4i
55-4
II
1920, Jan.
48,410
3,969
58-1
8
June
59,196
6,254
58-9
10-5
Repair of Engines.
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919 Jan. Feb.
Number of Engines repaired
797
1,177
640
405
25 21
Construction of New Engines.
Year
Number of new Engines
constructed in Russia
1914 1915
1916
- ;
816
903
599
^Q6
1918 1919
191
85
In the cotton industry of the Moscow district the earnings of skilled and unskilled workmen per day was as follows:
Unskilled workers
Carpenters of the
first category
Date
In kopeks
Per cent. 1919 = 100
In kopeks
Per cent. 1919 = 100
Easter 1914
46
2
155
3-9
Easter 1915
57
2-5
1 60
4-0
Dec. 1915
59
2-6
175
4-4
Easter 1916
68
3-o
200
5-o
Jan. 1917
68
3-0
250
6-2
Aug. 1917
145
6-3
575
14-4
Dec. 1917
800
34-8
1,950
48-7
June 1918
1,000
43-5
2,050
51-2
Sept. 1918
1,000
65-2
2,650
66-2
Feb. 1919
2,300
IOO
4,000
IOO
All partial attempts to put a stop to constant rioting, absentee- ism, and slackness availed nothing against the general intoxication of the " glorious revolutionary days.'
