I think that there is still a hope.There is as yet no sign of a general improvement in Russia, nor is such an improvement possible until the Russians have at least carried out the first stage of their programme.It would even not be surprising if things in general were to continue to go to the bad during the carrying out of that first stage.Shortages of food, of men, of tools, of materials, are so acute that they have had to choose those factories which are absolutely indispensable for the carrying out of this stage, and make of them "shock" factories, like the "shock" troops of the war, giving them equipment over and above their rightful share of the impoverished stock, feeding their workmen even at the cost of letting others go hungry.That means that other factories suffer.No matter, say the Russians, if only that first stage makes progress.Consequently, the only test that can be fairly applied is that of transport.Are they or are they not gaining on ruin in the matter of wagons and engines! Here are the figures of wagon repairs in the seven chief repairing shops up to the month of June:
December 1919............475 wagons were repaired.January 1920.............656February.................697March.1104April...................1141 May.....................1154 June1161After elaborate investigation last year, Trotsky, as temporary Commissar of Transport, put out an order explaining that the railways, to keep up their present condition, must repair roughly 800 engines every month.During the first six months of 1920 they fulfilled this task in the following percentages:
January..................32percentFebruary50March66
April....................78 May......................98 June.104I think that is a proof that, supposing normal relations existed between Russia and ourselves, the Russian would be able to tackle the first stage of the problem that lies before them, and would lie before them whatever their Government might be.Unfortunately there is no proof that this steady improvement can be continued, except under conditions of trade with Western Europe.There are Russians who think they can pull through without us, and, remembering the miracles of which man is capable when his back is to the wall, it would be rash to say that this is impossible.But other Russians point out gloomily that they have been using certain parts taken from dead engines (engines past repair) in order to mend sick engines.They are now coming to the mending, not of sick engines merely, but of engines on which post-mortems have already been held.They are actually mending engines, parts of which have already been taken out and used for the mending of other engines.There are consequently abnormal demands for such things as shafts and piston rings.They are particularly short of Babbitt metal and boiler tubes.In normal times the average number of new tubes wanted for each engine put through the repair shops was 25 (10 to 15 for engines used in the more northerly districts, and 30 to 40 for engines in the south where the water is not so good).This number must now be taken as much higher, because during recent years tubes have not been regularly renewed.Further, the railways have been widely making use of tubes taken from dead engines, that is to say, tubes already worn.Putting things at their very best,assuming that the average demand for tubes per engine will be that of normal times, then, if 1,000 engines are to be repaired monthly, 150,000 tubes will be wanted every six months.Now on the 15th of June the total stock of tubes ready for use was 58,000, and the railways could not expect to get more than another 13,000 in the near future.Unless the factories are able to do better (and their improvement depends on improvement in transport), railway repairs must again deteriorate, since the main source of materials for it in Russia, namely the deadengines, will presently be exhausted.
On this there is only one thing to be said.If, whether because we do not trade with them, or from some other cause, the Russians are unable to proceed even in this first stage of their programme, it means an indefinite postponement of the moment when Russia will be able to export anything, and, consequently, that when at last we learn that we need Russia as a market, she will be a market willing to receive gifts, but unable to pay for anything at all.And that is a state of affairs a great deal more serious to ourselves than to the Russians, who can, after all, live by wandering about their country and scratching the ground, whereas we depend on the sale of our manufactured goods for the possibility of buying the food we cannot grow ourselves.If the Russians fail, their failure will affect not us alone.It will, by depriving her of a market, lessen Germany's power of recuperation, and consequently her power of fulfilling her engagements.What, then, is to happen to France? And, if we are to lose our market in Russia, and find very much weakened markets in Germany and France, we shall be faced with an ever-increasing burden of unemployment, with the growth, in fact, of the very conditions in which alone we shall ourselves be unable to recover from the war.In such conditions, upheaval in England would be possible, and, for the dispassionate observer, there is a strange irony in the fact that the Communists desire that upheaval, and, at the same time, desire a rebirth of the Russian market which would tend to make that upheaval unlikely, while those who most fear upheaval are precisely those who urge us, by making recovery in Russia impossible, to improve the chances of collapse at home.The peasants in Russia are not alone in wanting incompatible things.
