from the hungry central industrial districts where they are
most of all needed.


Summing up the facts collected in this chapter and in the
first on the lack of things and the lack of men, I think the
economic crisis in Russia may be fairly stated as follows:
Owing to the appalling condition of Russian transport, and
owing to the fact that since 1914 Russia has been practically
in a state of blockade, the towns have lost their power of
supplying, either as middlemen or as producers, the simplest
needs of the villages. Partly owing to this, partly again
because of the condition of transport, the towns are not
receiving the necessaries of life in sufficient quantities. The
result of this is a serious fall in the productivity of labor, and
a steady flow of skilled and unskilled workmen from the
towns towards the villages, and from employments the
exercise of which tends to assist the towns in recovering
their old position as essential sources of supply to
employments that tend to have the opposite effect. If this
continues unchecked, it will make impossible the
regeneration of Russian industry, and will result in the
increasing independence of the villages, which will tend to
become entirely self-supporting communities, tilling the
ground in a less and less efficient manner, with ruder tools,
with less and less incentive to produce more than is wanted
for the needs of the village itself. Russia, in these
circumstances, may sink into something very like barbarism,
for with the decay of the economic importance of the towns
would decay also their authority, and free-booting on a small