February 20th.
To-day was an unlucky day. I felt tired, ill and hungry, and
had arranged to talk with both Rykov, the President of the
Supreme Council of People's Economy, and Krestinsky, the
Commissar of Finance, at such awkward times that I got no
tea and could get nothing to eat until after four o'clock. Two
such talks on an empty stomach (for the day before I had
had only a plate of soup and a little scrap of fish) were a
little too much for me, and I fear I did not gather as much
information as I should have collected under better
conditions.
I had a jolly drive, early in the morning, through the Chinese
Town, and out by the gate in the old wall, up Myasnitzkaya
Street, and round to the right to a building that used to
be the Grand Hotel of Siberia, a loathsome place where
I once stayed. Here in the old days provincial merchants put
up, who did not mind high prices and a superfluity of bugs.
It has now been turned into a hive of office work, and is the
headquarters of the Supreme Council of Public Economy,
which, controlling production and distribution alike, is the
centre of the constructive work going on throughout the
country.
This Council, the theorists tell me, is intended to become the
central organization of the state. The Soviets will naturally
become less and less important as instruments of political
transition as that transition is completed and the struggle
against reaction within and without comes to an end. Then
the chief business of the state will no longer be to protect
itself against enemies but to develop its economic life, to
increase its productivity and to improve the material
conditions of the workers of whom it is composed. All these
tasks are those of the Supreme Council of Public Economy,
and as the bitterness of the struggle dies away this body,
which came into being almost unnoticed in the din of battle,
will become more and more important in comparison
with the Soviets, which were in origin not constructive
organizations but the instruments of a revolution, the hardest
stages of which have already been accomplished.
It is perhaps worth while to set out here the constitution of
this Council. It is considered at present as the economic
department of the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee, to which, and to the Council of People's
Commissaries, it is responsible. It regulates all production
and distribution. It reports on the various estimates of the
state budget and, in conjunction with the Commissariats of
Finance and State Control, carries out the financing of all
branches of public economy. It consists of 69 members, and
is composed as follows:--Ten representatives from the
All-Russian Executive Committee, thirty from the
All-Russian Industrial Productive Union (a union of Trade
Unions), twenty from the ten District Councils of Public
Economy, two from the All-Russian Council of Workers'
Cooperative Societies, and one representative each from the
Commissariats of Supply, Ways of Communication,
Labour, Agriculture, Finance, Trade
and Industry, and Internal Affairs. It meets as a whole at
least once in every month. The work of its members is
directed by a Presidium of nine members, of which it elects
eight, the President being elected by the All-Russian Central
Executive Committee, and enjoying the rank of a People's
Commissar or Minister.
I had a long talk with Rykov, the President, or rather listened
to a long lecture by him, only now and then succeeding in
stopping him by forcing a question into the thread of his
harangue. He stammers a little, and talks so indistinctly that
for the first time (No. The first time was when Chicherin
gabbled through the provisions of the Brest Treaty at the
fourth All-Russian Assembly.) I felt willing to forgive
normal Russians, who nearly always talk as if they were in
Petrograd and their listener in Vladivostok.
Part of what he said is embodied in what I have already
written. But besides sketching the general aims of the
Council, Rykov talked of the present economic position of
Russia. At the moment Russian industry was in peculiar
difficulties owing to the fuel crisis. This was partly due
to the fact that the Czechs and the Reactionaries, who had
used the Czechs to screen their own organization, had
control of the coalfields in the Urals, and partly to the fact
that the German occupation of the Ukraine and the activities
of Krasnov had cut off Soviet Russia from the Donetz coal
basin, which had been a main source of supply, although in
the old days Petrograd had also got coal from England. It
was now, however, clear that, with a friendly Ukraine, they
would have the use of the Donetz basin much sooner than
they had expected.
The Brest peace and the deprivations it involved had made
them consider the position of the industrial districts from a
new standpoint, and they were determined to make
Petrograd and Moscow as far as possible independent of all
fuel which had to be brought from a distance. He referred
to the works in progress for utilizing water power to provide
electrical energy for the Petrograd factories, and said that
similar electrification, on a basis of turf fuel, is planned for
Moscow.
I asked how they were going to get the machines. He
said that of course they would prefer to buy them abroad,
but that, though this was impossible, the work would not be
delayed on that account, since they could make a start with
the machines they had. Turbines for the Petrograd works
they still hoped to obtain from abroad when peace had been
arranged. If the worst came to the worst he thought they
could make their own. "That is one unexpected result of
Russia's long isolation. Her dependence on imports from
abroad is lessening." He gave an example in salt, the urgent
need of which has led to the opening of a new industry,
whose resources are such as to enable Russia not only to
supply herself with salt, but the rest of the world as well if
need should be.
I asked what were their immediate plans with regard to the
electrification of Moscow. He said that there was no water
power near Moscow but big turf deposits which would be
used as fuel. In order not to interfere with the actual lighting
of the town from the power-station already in existence,
they are taking the electric plant from the Provodnik works,
which will supply enough electricity for the lighting of the town.
As soon as that is set up and working, they will use it for the immediate
needs of Moscow, and set about transferring the existing
power-station to the new situation near the turf beds. In
this way they hope to carry out the change from coal to turf
without interfering with the ordinary life of the town.
Eventually when things settle down they will get a larger
plant.
I said, "Of course you have a double object in this, not only
to lessen the dependence of the industrial districts on fuel
that has to be brought from a distance, and of which you
may be deprived, but also to lessen the strain on transport!"
"Yes," he said. "Indeed at the present moment the latter is
our greatest difficulty, hampering everything we would wish
to do. And transport we cannot put right without help from
abroad. Therefore we do everything we can to use local
resources, and are even developing the coal deposits near
Moscow, which are of inferior quality to the Donetz coal,
and were in the old days purposely smothered by the Donetz
coal-owners, who wished to preserve their monopoly."
I asked him if in his opinion Russia could organize
herself without help from abroad. He said, "I rather think
she will have to. We want steam dredgers, steam
excavators, and locomotives most of all, but we have small
hope of getting them in the immediate future, because the
effects of the war have been so serious in the
disorganization of industry in the western countries that it is
doubtful whether they will be in a position to supply even
their own needs."
While we were talking Berg, the secretary, came in. I asked
him how his Soviet matches were progressing, and he said
that the labels were being printed and that the first lot would
soon be ready. They will be distributed on the card system,
and he had calculated that they could sell them at twelve
kopecks a packet. I paid a rouble for a box of ordinary
matches at Bieloostrov, and a rouble and a half here.