Ussr

A great deal of time is spent on "political training," and every ship has a complete political staff, the chief of which is known as the military commissar of the ship and ranks with the captain. This individual is endowed with extraordinary authority ; he may punish any officer, report on the captain, and only on purely technical matters can the captain overrule him. The political element interfel es so much with the training and fighting efficiency of the fleet, that until it is entirely eliminated, which is hardly a probable development under Soviet rule, the navy of Russia cannot be regarded as in any way the formidable force which the ships themselves would appear to represent on paper.

Administration.

The supreme command of the Red fleet is exercised by a "chief of the naval forces of the S.S.R. and head commissar." The present (1928) occupant of the office was originally a fabric worker. Before the Revolution he was a pri vate in the army. A few of the old Tsarist officers remain; amongst these is the present commander-in-chief of the Baltic Fleet.

The Pre-War Situation.

Pre-war Russia was in many re spects a country of strange contrasts. While she remained a nation which was only semi-industrialised, the industry which existed in the Petersburg and Moscow districts and in the South was of a very modern kind, equipped with up-to-date German and English plant and often staffed by German and English managers and engineers. There existed in Russia from as early as the 13th and 14th centuries co-operative associations known by the name artel. The artels originally consisted of bodies of working-men as sociated, without formal constitution, for the purpose of jointly carrying out and dividing the profits of some undertaking, gen erally in connection with hunting and fishing, and as such they survived among the fishermen of Archangel up to modern times. In course of time artels were extended to industrial and financial enterprises, and the members frequently contributed not only work, but capital. Such artels were independent bodies working for their own profit and at their own risk. Combinations of the artel type developed later into the normal type of co-operative productive associations adopting formal constitutions. While only 15 per cent of the Russian people lived in towns, and twice as many persons were employed in village handicraft industry as in factories, large factories employing more than a thousand hands covered nearly a half of all factory workers, or nearly as large a number as in U.S.A. In the countryside primitive peasant agri culture, with its 3-field system and often its old communal "strip" system and periodic redistribution of holdings, existed alongside landlords' estates which were often run on model large-scale lines; and politically Tsarist absolutism faced a peasantry hungry for land and an urban proletariat which nourished the most revolu tionary socialism in Europe. Primarily an exporter of agricultural

produce and an importer of manufactures, Russia possessed sup plies of every known mineral; and while her coal resources sup plied only 8o per cent of her internal market, she controlled over 90 per cent of the world output of platinum, was the leading pro ducer of manganese, and was second only to U.S.A. in production of petroleum, estimates placing her oil resources at some 35 per cent of the world's deposits.

The principal industrial centres of Russia were five in number. In four of these—the Donetz basin in the South, the Urals, the Moscow region and the Dombrova region of Poland—industry was localised under the attraction of coal and metal deposits. The fifth was the Petersburg area, with its chain of metal works on its southern outskirts, attracted to the city as a port and as the political capital. The textile industry, including cotton, wool, silk, linen and jute, was less closely localised, being found in Moscow and the neighbouring provinces to the East, round Peters burg, and also in territory which now belongs to Estonia and Poland. Baku, in the Caucasus, was a developing centre of the oil industry. A small chemical industry in the south, sugar pro duction in the Kiev district, flour milling in the chief grain regions, paper and wood-working, leather and spirit and tobacco—these complete the list of the principal manufactures. In the most important of these industries a considerable role was played by foreign capital as well as by foreign technical personnel. Nearly half the capital in the Donetz coal industry was foreign, and over three-quarters in iron-mining, engineering and the oil industry.

On an average in the years before the war Russia imported capital to the amount of some 200 million rubles per annum, while by 1914 between 1,500 and 2,000 million gold rubles (ap proximately, io rubles= f 1) of foreign capital was invested in industry, and a further 5,000-5,500 million rubles was invested in various state and municipal or state-guaranteed loans. On the foreign capital a large toll of interest payments had to be made, which already considerably exceeded the sum of annual borrow ings and constituted the main explanation of the so-called "favour able" balance of trade (or unpaid excess of exports over imports), which on the average of the four pre-war years amounted to 377 million roubles. For certain important raw materials also Russia was dependent on foreign countries—for half of her raw cotton supplies, for dyes and certain other chemicals, for a fifth of her coal supplies, as well as for a large amount of machinery and in dustrial equipment ; and it was to provide the means for importing these, as well as to pay the annual interest on foreign capital that the grain export trade was of such great importance.