Thus the ranks of industry become
still further depleted.
Except as regards munitions of war, the collapse of industry in Russia
is extraordinarily complete. The resolutions passed by the Ninth
Congress of the Communist Party (April, 1920) speak of "the incredible
catastrophes of public economy." This language is not too strong,
though the recovery of the Baku oil has done something to produce a
revival along the Volga basin.
The failure of the whole industrial side of the national economy,
including transport, is at the bottom of the other failures of the
Soviet Government. It is, to begin with, the main cause of the
unpopularity of the Communists both in town and country: in town,
because the people are hungry; in the country, because food is taken
with no return except paper. If industry had been prosperous, the
peasants could have had clothes and agricultural machinery, for which
they would have willingly parted with enough food for the needs of the
towns. The town population could then have subsisted in tolerable
comfort; disease could have been coped with, and the general lowering
of vitality averted. It would not have been necessary, as it has been
in many cases, for men of scientific or artistic capacity to abandon
the pursuits in which they were skilled for unskilled manual labour.
The Communist Republic might have been agreeable to live in--at least
for those who had been very poor before.
The unpopularity of the Bolsheviks, which is primarily due to the
collapse of industry, has in turn been accentuated by the measures
which it has driven the Government to adopt.
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