February 22nd.
This morning I drove to the Dielovoi Dvor, the big house on
the Varvarskaya Square which is occupied by the central
organization of the textile industry. The head of this
organization is Nogin, an extremely capable, energetic
Russian, so capable, indeed, that I found it hard to believe
he could really be a Russian. He is a big man, with a mass
of thick brown shaggy hair, so thick that the little bald patch
on the top of his head seems like an artificial tonsure. Nogin
sketched the lines on which the Russian textile industry was
being reorganized, and gave orders that I should be supplied
with all possible printed matter in which to find the details.
The "Centro-Textile" is the actual centre of the economic
life of Russia, because, since textiles are the chief
materials of exchange between the towns and the villages, on
its success depends the success of everything else. The
textile industry is, in any case, the most important of all
Russian, industries. Before the war it employed 500,000
workmen, and Nogin said that in spite of the disorganization
of the war and of the revolution 400,000 are employed to-day.
This may be so in the sense that 400,000 are receiving
pay, but lack of fuel or of raw material must have brought
many factories to a standstill.
All the big factories have been nationalized. Formerly,
although in any one town there might be factories carrying
out all the different processes, these factories belonged to
different owners. A single firm or bank might control
factories scattered over Russia and, so that the whole
process should be in its hands, the raw material travelled
from factory to factory through the country, instead of
merely moving about a single town. Thus a roll of material
might have gone through one process at Jaroslav, another at
Moscow, and a third at Tula, and finally come back to
Jaroslav to be finished, simply because the different
factories which worked upon it, though widely scattered,
happened to be under one control. Nationalization has
made possible the rational regrouping of factories so that the
complete process is carried out in one place, consequently
saving transport. There are twenty-three complete groups
of this kind, and in the textile industry generally about fifty
groups in all.
There has been a similar concentration of control. In the old
days there were hundreds of different competitive firms with
their buildings and offices in the Ilyinka, the Varvarka, and
the Nikolskaya.* [(*)Streets and a district in Moscow] The
Chinese town* [(*) See above.]was a mass of little offices of
different textile firms. The whole of that mass of struggling
competitive units of direction had now been concentrated in
the house in which we were talking. The control of the
workers had been carried through in such a way that the
technical experts had proper weight. (See p. 171.) There
were periodical conferences of elected representatives of all
the factories, and Nogin believed that the system of
combined elective workmen's and appointed experts'
representation could hardly be improved upon.
Nationalization had had the effect of standardizing the
output. Formerly, an infinite variety of slightly different
stuffs were produced, the variations being often merely for
the sake of being different in the competitive trade. Useless
varieties had now been done away with, with the result of
greater economy in production.
I asked what he could tell me about their difficulties in the
matter of raw material. He said they no longer get anything
from America, and while the railway was cut at Orenburg by
the Cossacks, they naturally could get no cotton from
Turkestan. In fact, last autumn they had calculated that they
had only enough material to keep the factories going until
December. Now they found they could certainly keep going
to the end of March, and probably longer. Many small
factories, wishing to make their cases out worse than they
were, had under-estimated their stocks. Here, as in other
things, the isolation of the revolution had the effect of
teaching the Russians that they were less dependent upon the
outside world than they had been in the habit of supposing.
He asked me if I knew it had been considered impossible to
combine flax and cotton in such a way that the mixture
could be worked in machines intended for cotton only.
They had an infinite supply of flax, much of which in the
old days had been exported. Investigations carried on for the
Centro-Textile by two professors, the brothers Chilikin, had
ended in the discovery of three different processes for the
cottonizing of flax in such a way that they could now mix
not only a small percentage of their flax with cotton and use
the old machines, but were actually using fifty per cent. flax
and had already produced material experimentally with as
much as seventy-five per cent.
(Some days later two young technicians from the
Centro-Textile brought me a neatly prepared set of specimens
illustrating these new processes and asked me to bring them
anything of the same sort from England in return. They
were not Bolsheviks--were, in fact, typical non-politicals.
They were pleased with what the Centro--Textile
was doing, and said that more encouragement was given to
research than ever formerly. But they were very despondent
about the economic position. I could not make them
understand why Russia was isolated, and that I might be
unable to bring them technical books from England.)
Nogin rather boastfully said that the western linen industry
would suffer from the isolation of Russia, whereas in the
long run the Russians would be able to do without the rest of
the world. With, regard to wool, they would have no
difficulty now that they were again united with a friendly
Ukraine. The silk industry was to be developed in the
Astrakhan district where climatic conditions are particularly
favourable.
I asked about the fate of the old textile manufacturers and
was told that though many had gone abroad many were
working in the nationalized factories. The engineering staff,
which mostly struck work at the beginning of the revolution,
had almost without exception returned, the younger
engineers in particular realizing the new possibilities opening
before the industry, the continual need of new
improvements, and the immediate welcome given to
originality of any kind. Apart from the question of food,
which was bad for everybody, the social standard of the
workers had risen. Thus one of their immediate difficulties
was the provision of proper houses. The capitalists and
manufacturers kept the workers in barracks. "Now-a-days
the men want better dwellings and we mean to give them
better. Some have moved into the old houses of the owners
and manufacturers, but of course there are not enough of
these to go round, and we have extensive plans in the way of
building villages and garden cities for the workmen."
I asked Nogin what, in his opinion, was most needed by
Russia from abroad, and he said that as far as the textile
industries were concerned they wanted machinery. Like
every one else to whom I put this question, he said that
every industry in Russia would be in a better position if only
they had more locomotives. "Some of our factories are
stopping now for lack of fuel, and at Saratov, for example,
we have masses of raw material which we are unable to get
to Moscow."