in Russia is part of
the crisis in Europe, and has been in the main brought about like the
revolution itself, by the same forces that have caused, for example, the
crisis in Germany or the crisis in Austria.

No country in Europe is capable of complete economic independence. In
spite of her huge variety of natural resources, the Russian organism
seemed in 1914 to have been built up on the generous assumption that
with Europe at least the country was to be permanently at peace, or
at the lost to engage in military squabbles which could be reckoned
in months, and would keep up the prestige of the autocracy without
seriously hampering imports and exports. Almost every country in Europe,
with the exception of England, was better fitted to stand alone, was
less completely specialized in a single branch of production. England,
fortunately for herself, was not isolated during the war, and will not
become isolated unless the development of the crisis abroad deprives
her of her markets. England produces practically no food, but
great quantities of coal, steel and manufactured goods. Isolate her
absolutely, and she will not only starve, but will stop producing
manufactured goods, steel and coal, because those who usually produce
these things will be getting nothing for their labor except money which
they will be unable to use to buy dinners, because there will be no
dinners to buy. That supposititious case is a precise parallel to what
has happened in Russia. Russia produced practically no manufactured
goods (70 per cent. of her machinery she received from abroad), but
great quantities of food. The blockade isolated her. By the blockade I
do not mean merely the childish stupidity committed by ourselves, but
the blockade, steadily increasing in strictness, which began in August,
1914, and has been unnecessarily prolonged by our stupidity. The war,
even while for Russia it was not nominally a blockade, was so actually.
The use of tonnage was perforce restricted to the transport of the
necessaries of war, and these were narrowly defined as shells, guns and
so on, things which do not tend to improve a country economically, but
rather the reverse. The imports from Sweden through Finland were no sort
of make-weight for the loss of Poland and Germany.

The war meant that Russia's ordinary imports practically ceased. It
meant a strain on Russia, comparable to that which would have been put
on England if the German submarine campaign